The big hydro industry always used to consider the "new renewables" as Mickey Mouse technologies that could never match the billions of kilowatt hours humming through the lines linked up to the world's megadams.
But times have changed. Big Hydro is learning that lots of small projects can add up to a lot more juice than a small number of very big ones.
In 2002, new installations of wind power worldwide exceeded the capacity of new big hydro for the first time ever. Wind power engineers installed more megawatts than their big hydro competitors three times over the following six years. And in 2009, it looks like wind power blew (so to speak) big hydro right out of the water.
Solar installations are rising even faster than wind, but from a much lower level. Solar installers added nearly half as many panels in 2009 as the year before, making solar the world's fastest growing power source.
The 2009, wind and solar numbers come from BP's recently released "Statistical Review of World Energy 2010." (The "Cost of Energy" blog notes that the review provides "a veritable gusher of data and an undersea volcano of graphs, all summarized in a blowout of an Excel spreadsheet.")
British Petroleum's review doesn't provide large hydro data and no 2009 data are available elsewhere. But data on trends in new big hydro capacity from the last decade suggests that 2009 wind installations were likely at least a quarter more than big hydro -- and that the dammers will never again get close to wind power's annual additions.
Of course, the dam builders have been steadily blocking more and more rivers every year for more than a century, so today hydropower still generates a lot more electricity each year than the wind or sun. But the trend is definitely in favor of the new renewables rather the old and often non-renewable (big hydro with reservoirs is not renewable because reservoirs eventually get clogged with sediments).
Indeed, the percentage of the world's electricity generated by hydropower has fallen over the past decade from 19% in the 1990s to around 16% today. (This declining hydrodependency means that the world's energy supply is slowly becoming less vulnerable to climate-change induced droughts).
The fact that wind is now a bigger and more dynamic industry than hydro is more than just symbolic of the times a changin'. It means that the new renewables industries will increasingly have more economic and political clout and that the lobbying power of Big Hydro will steadily wane. (It also means that the new renewables industries will also inevitably be able to wield their power in self-interested ways that are detrimental to the greater good. Wind and solar executives can no doubt be just as corrupt and greedy as can their hydro counterparts. But the technologies that they push will not be as inherently destructive as river-wrecking and community-evicting and often greenhouse gas belching big dams).
Of course, by far the biggest part of our non-renewable electricity comes from CO2-spewing coal. It is no exaggeration to call coal the great enemy of humanity and life as we know it. So thank goodness that the era of big coal, like the era of big river-wrecking hydro, may be gradually coming to an end. Some solar industry executives believe their technology will be generating electricity as cheaply as coal plants in a few years time - and even the always-conservative International Energy Agency predicts solar as being cost-competitive within a decade.
Given that the financial cost of big-dam hydroelectricity is in the same ballpark as coal, solar is also going to soon be competitive with big hydro dams. And given that it can easily take 7-10 years for the planning and construction of a megadam, it means that dams currently in the planning phase could find themselves financially obsolete from their first day of operation.
The energy revolution is happening. We just need to do all we can to make it happen as quickly as possible.
[A graphic and spreadsheet and some more analysis of the data behind this blog is available on my International Rivers blog]
The Bonneville Power Administration can load balance 6,000 Megawatts with it's hydro dams. There are currently 3,000 megawatts of wind power installed.
Wind and Hydro are complimentary technologies, not competitors.
Hydro and wind/solar/geothermal etc also compete for limited funds, especially in places like Ethiopia which has a huge untapped wind resource yet is extremely hydro-dependent (85% of electricity from big hydro) yet because of the lobbying momentum of a well entrenched (and foreign supported) big hydro industry keeps building more dams.
I am agree with you. Prticularly, after the 1950 the dam building industry has got momentum and developed a lot. There was a time when every emphasis was on the hydro-power but now the policy makers as well as the developers has realised that it is not only opition of energy generation. There are other sources of energy generation which can be used for the development purpose. The need of the hour is to search those opitions and work on that under R&D programmes.
Being a native of Himalayan state on the basis of my seven years research I arrived at a conclusion that under the threat of climate change, Himalayan rivers are under threat and maximum rivers because of dams are struggling for the survival and are at the verge of extinction. In my state i.e. Himachal Pradesh we have 401 small and large dams on five river basins of the state, particularly focusing on three basin and more that 72 percent projects are on three basins, which are threatening the lives and livelihood of the native people as well as contributing a lot in the climate change and putting the existance of these rivers at stake.
So, the other opitions of energy generation is a welcome step but for me it needs wide publicity as well as compelling power to compel the policy makers at local as well as international level.
Thanks
Dr. Mohinder Slariya
Environmental Sociologist
from Himalayan District Chamba
Himachal Pradesh India
The emphasis in the article is on the investments made in windpower in 2009. In 2010, however, the investments in wind have fallen to about 10% of what they were in 2009. The lack of a long-term governmental program for alternative energy development in this country has resulted in drastic cut backs for the sector in 2010.
Hydro in this country, in terms of electrical generation from dams and turbines, has gone about as far as it can go. Hydro is a wonderfully efficient and cheap source of power, which is why the federal government spent so much time and money developing it, but there are no more places to put up major dams in this country. On the other hand, there are lots of places in which wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass have tremendous potential, that have not yet been tapped.
If the federal government would put up even a fraction of the seed money that it put up to develop hydro and nuclear power in this country, we would soon be able to cut back on our use of petroleum and coal. Unfortunately, Big Oil and the coal industries, through their friends in the Republican Party, have used their political clout in the Senate to block renewable energy development.
Rooftop PV Solar, Offshore wind, and Waste Bio char, can supply the worlds energy and fuel needs: cleanly, safely, Forever, within 12 years and cheaper in the long run 2-6 cents now, and 26$ per barrel bio oils.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
about 1$ per Wp solar panels, new.
install solar plants for about $1.30 per watt, compared with an industry average of about $1.75, according to Hardy." http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=a7K1FZoNgJ0w
Wind: “between two and six cents today, depending on location.12 Wind power approaches competitiveness with conventional generation at this price point. “
http://www.repp.org/articles/static/1/binaries/wind%20issue%20brief_FINAL.pdf
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/publ/BiofBioproBioref%203,%20547-562,%202009%20Laird.pdf
26$ per barrel bio oil from waste bio char.
They are over 1%, so can supply all our energy needs in 12 years.
A very long time no doubt.
R/ PRONESE
(If your main source of information is talk radio, as seems like it might well be the case, you really ought to think about branching out a bit.)