Hydropower came into the energy matrix as a consequence of a sequence of technological innovations in the late 19th C. Rapidly expanding electricity demand turned hydropower in numerous countries into an "energy bridge".
And Vietnam's coal reserves, mostly in the north, are not easy to get at.In this section Drama queens Ordinance survey Knife-edge Full to bursting A-bian back home A good scrap Birthday blues ReprintsYet the hydropower boom comes at a price.
Record amounts of hydropower capacity came online in 2008 and 2009, the most recent years for which data are available, according to Richard Taylor, executive director of the International Hydropower Association in London.
"In western China, the one-sided pursuit of economic benefits from hydropower has come at the expense of relocated people, the environment and the land and its cultural heritage," Fan Xiao, a Sichuan Province geologist and a critic of the Three Gorges project, said via e-mail.
Then comes hydropower and nuclear plants.
Ninety percent of this comes from hydropower resources in the northern parts of Pakistan [1, 14]. Figure 9 shows current operational hydropower projects in Pakistan also shows the respective projects that will be completed by 2015 to bring the installed capacity to over 8000 MW.
Overall, Vietnam earns just $574 per tonne of CO2 emitted, compared to $1,721 per tonne in the Philippines, even though half of Vietnam's electricity comes from hydropower.
But what is being debated now is whether, when it comes to hydropower, the free market is really the right recipe.
In Albania about a third of energy is imported but the rest comes from hydropower, which is classified by the International Energy Agency thinktank as renewable.
About 50% of electricity generation in MRS comes from hydropower plants.
