This paper presents a detailed proof-of-concept study of the hydropower model, including the underlining theoretical principles.
"At present, there does not seem to be an appetite for best practice development, especially amongst the Chinese-developed dams in the Cardamom Mountains and elsewhere," said David Blake, a doctoral candidate in the school of international development at the University of East Anglia, England, who has studied the development of hydropower dams in Southeast Asia.
The multi-criteria analysis is applied to the case study of Sri Lankan hydropower projects as an illustrative example.
With a case study of the Pondo hydropower resettlement project in Tibet, China, the results showed the utility of the respondents for a single attribute ranged from 43.08 to 127.69 CNY, with the sequence of importance being natural environment, religious practice, and social relationships.
But industry officials in the US say the study misrepresents the benefit of hydropower in the fight to rein in global warming.
With support of the data collected from a fieldwork survey, this study reports the multiple facets of hydropower development risks in China as perceived by main project participants.
Led by Laura Scherer, a research associate at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, that study concludes the "carbon footprint of hydropower is far higher than previously assumed".
These are based upon actual case studies and upon the experience of hydropower industry practitioners and of professionals from the environmental and social sciences.
Motivated by the need to understand future impacts of hydropower alternatives, this study conducted a multi-dimensional, empirical analysis of the full hydropower portfolio.
The analysis is focused on Colombia and Ecuador, which have been trading electricity for more than 10 years and offer an interesting case study given their complementarity in terms of hydropower supply.
The study found that increasing the efficiency of hydropower plants — especially the turbines — by only 10percentt could completely offset the potential losses from climate change.
