This is something I didn’t know about. I knew that when they build a dam, they cut down the trees on the land that will be underwater. But there are still lots of carbon in the soil.<\/p>\n
p.69<\/p>\n
<< Hydropower has a lot going for it — it’s relatively cheap — but it also has some big downsides. Making a reservoir displaces local communities and wildlife. When you cover land with water, if there’s a lot of carbon in the soil, the carbon eventually turns into methane and escapes into the atmosphere\u2014which is why studies show that depending on where it’s built, a dam can actually be a worse emitter than coal for 50 to 100 years before it makes up for all the methane it’s responsible for*. In addition, the amount of electricity you can generate from a dam depends on the season, because you’re relying on rain-fed streams and rivers. And, of course, hydropower is immobile. You have to build the dams where the rivers are.<\/p>\n
* These calculations are drawn from a life cycle assessment of dams. Life cycle assessment is an interesting field that involves documenting all the greenhouse gases that a given product is responsible for, from the time it’s produced until the end of its life. These assessments are a useful way to analyze the climate impact of various technologies, but they’re pretty complicated, so in this book I will focus on direct emissions, which are easier to explain and generally lead to the same conclusions anyway. >><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is something I didn’t know about. I knew that when they build a dam, they cut down the trees on the land that will be underwater. But there are still lots of carbon in the soil. p.69 << Hydropower has a lot going for it — it’s relatively cheap — but it also has <\/p>\n (Read More…)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[642,492,836,34],"tags":[837],"class_list":["post-15264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-environment","category-hydroelectricity","category-renewable-energy","tag-life-cycle-assessment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15276,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15264\/revisions\/15276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}