Today, dams are big business in China, and profit-seeking is another major reason behind the hydropower push.
A major hydropower push would also likely require new technologies, something that Wyden and Murkowski are now promoting with their "Marine and Hydrokinetic Renewable Energy Act," which would fund research into ways to tap energy from rivers and streams that don't involve damming up their flow and creating large reservoirs.
Renewable-energy interests — wind, solar and hydropower — are pushing back against coal-fired power plants, which have 40-year life spans.
The drought, affecting Brazil's southeast and central regions, has prompted rationing in 19 cities, undermined hydropower generation, pushed up greenhouse gas emissions and led to squabbles between states vying for dwindling water resources.
He rattles off numbers to justify the big push in hydropower: in Europe, average energy use is 12,000KWh a person annually; in a middle income country it is 5,000KWh; in Africa, it is 100KWh.
Uygen Wangchuk, secretary of the National Environment Commission and in charge of granting environmental clearances for new projects, admits there are increasing pressures both within and outside the government to push through hydropower, mining and quarrying.
The greatest attention, however, is on the controversial hydropower plant that was pushed through by President Rousseff despite years of protests by environmentalists and human rights campaigners who say the dam on the Xingu river would destroy indigenous peoples' livelihoods and harm one of the world's most biodiverse regions.
Nevertheless, the Bank pushed large hydropower projects in India, ramping up debt, while resettling millions from fertile land near riverbanks.
Meanwhile, efforts to find new resources, from timber to minerals, to electricity via hydropower have led to a push into this high-elevation landscape from below, as roads are constructed and industry gains a toehold in these mountains.
The results are doubling per-hectare yields, while sugar cane now even generates electric power by burning the bagasse, thus lowering the push for more hydropower plants and more floodable areas.
Renewable Energy Essentials: Hydropower (IEA, 2010).
