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Notice this is because 80% of the energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable - unlike wind and solar wh

Notice this is because 80% of the energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable - unlike wind and solar which in this case provided 7% and 0.01% respectively and are not reliable. It frustrates me that so many environmentalists are still against hydro because it alters ecosystems when nature itself is inherently violent, dangerous and in a constant state of flux. I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. The biggest real problem with Hydro in the context of human flourishing is ensuring that the dams are well-constructed and nature proof i.e. hold up against natural disasters because if they don't downstream settlements and human lives can be at risk.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
They can't rely 100% precisely because hydro is unreliable. A dry season and it runs down (which it did). And dams - isn't Mosul going to be destroyed soon because its dam requires constant maintenance (a clay curtain pumped into the porous bedrock) which hasn't happened since Desert Storm?
- jfaucett 10y ago
  "They can't rely 100% precisely because hydro is unreliable." True in an absolute sense but in comparison to solar and wind hydro is extremely reliable, and can be used to power the grid when all other energy sources fail [1,2] As far as Mosul I'm unsure, maybe someone else more informed can chime in on the actual state of affairs there since wikipedia/google turned up multiple contradicting results for me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Advantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Advantages [2] http://www.hydro.org/why-hydro/reliable/ http://www.hydro.org/why-hydro/reliable/
- celticninja 10y ago
  Mosul is hardly an example of a well engineered dam though built in 1984 and falling to pieces. The Hoover Dam was built in 1933 and is not in need of pulling down.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    If maintenance were interrupted (social upheaval) then Hoover too would fail. It take maintenance to keep it running - in particular mussels would foul and stop the turbines in a few seasons.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > If maintenance were interrupted (social upheaval) then Hoover too would fail. Probably not in your lifetime let alone in a generation. Mosul's an issue because the substrate is not suitable for dam building (it's soluble gypsum, so it just keeps eroding because dam foundations kind-of tend to be around water) so the dam has to be continuously grouted to prevent it from failing.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        Add Mosul holds 2.5 million people on a floodplain. When the dam fails catastrophically, it will be a bloodbath. It'll happen in the next few years.
    - cr1895 10y ago
      They're not really comparable are they? It's not whether the turbines in the dam will continue to generate electricity, but whether or not the dam itself is structurally sound. My limited understanding is that the Mosul dam is not, while Hoover will outlast us.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      The risk in the case of Mosul is failure of the dam face itself. Not merely the generating equipment. Hoover faces no threats of similar magnitude.
- lj3 10y ago
  It depends on where the dams are. I live in the North Eastern USA. Most of this part of the country (and eastern Canada) are powered by hydro. Niagara Falls doesn't turn off. Neither do dams, really. Even in the winter (-30F) and during summer droughts, they have water passing over the turbines. None of the dams in my area have needed maintenance in the time I've been alive (about 30 years). It's cleaner and more reliable than any other kind of energy production on the planet including coal and oil. Nothing is 100% reliable, but hydro is the closest we're likely to get.
- imgabe 10y ago
  Everything requires maintenance. Solar panels have to be cleaned or replaced if they get scratched. You have to clean the bird carcasses out of the windmills. Nuclear requires constant supervision. There's no maintenance-free option.
  - vacri 10y ago
    Coal also requires humans to transport lots of fuel to it, and lots of big machinery to get that fuel.
- greenshackle 10y ago
  It depends. Where I'm from we run on 97% hydro power and we never run out.
jackmott 10y ago
nature is inherently violent yes, but the effect of humans on the rest of the species on the planet is equivalent to extinction events that are rare on geologic time scales (already!) and some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones.
- jfaucett 10y ago
  "...some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones." That sentence is horrible. We're talking about living, breathing, thinking human beings not "sheeple". And to equate people who have dreams, hopes, and aspirations to a lot of mindless animals whose only desire is to destroy the planet and play on iphones is an egregious misrepresentation of reality. If we want to make our planet better for all its inhabitants we need to be clear and honest about the facts and our goals. I happen to think our primary goal should be human flourishing, self-actualization and happiness. If you think our primary goal should be the elimination of species extinction or something else - I don't want to put words in your mouth - we could discuss that...
  - 7952 10y ago
    Ecological protection is not necessarily mutually exclusive with human development. And human beings are massively reliant on those ecosystems in subtle and important ways. Your point seems like a false dichotomy. We just need to approach problems in an environmentally literate way.
    - sebastos 10y ago
      It's not a false dichotomy, because the above poster isn't presenting a dichotomy at all. We'd all like to see human flourishing AND ecological protection. Sometimes those goals interfere with each other, and sometimes they don't. In the cases where they do, we can ask: which is our _highest_ priority? If we had the choice between saving the human species and nuking the planet, or going extinct to save the extant ecosystem on Earth, which should we choose? That's the point being made. Nobody's trying to say that all actions live on a 1-D spectrum between "environment preserving" and "human promoting". That's obviously untrue. I don't think anybody needs reminding that humans can't flourish if the Earth is a barren desert.
millettjon 10y ago
Unreliability of wind power generate can be largely mitigated by interconnecting disparate wind farms spread over a large area.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Which requires large areas which isn't always possible. I don't think this will be properly solved until we have proper fuel-cells
- antr 10y ago
  Energy investor here with a pretty large wind portfolio (1GW) under management. This geographically dispersed portfolio idea doesn't really work. Due to different wind patterns, and wind types, a wind portfolio cannot be relied on for stable power generation... this is ignoring power curves, availability, transmission losses, network balancing, node bottlenecks, etc. Take as an example the entire wind capacity in Ireland, and the curtailment issues this generates.
  - beat 10y ago
    Are you looking into storage as well? The engineer in me says caching is the way to convert an intermittent source to a steady load. I'm really curious what a wind investor is thinking about this!
    - antr 10y ago
      Have we looked at it, yes. Are we investing in battery storage, no. It's too early for us to invest in this technology. This should be interesting for energy investors with a slightly higher risk appetite.
      - beat 10y ago
        Ah, that makes sense. It's a very early market. I'm excited for the possibilities, though. If storage can solve the intermittency issue, solar/wind can become baseline load sources more easily, and we'll need far less actual generation in place to maintain the grid. I firmly believe the way out of our power dilemma is just make wind/solar cheaper per kwh than fossil fuels.
millettjon 10y ago
In Chile, the mining companies in the North use a disproportionate amount of energy. They are located in one of the driest deserts in the world and could easily supply their power needs from solar with minimal impact. Instead they continually fight to build dams in pristine temperate rain forest in the South.
- jfaucett 10y ago
  "could easily supply their power needs from solar with minimal impact." I would really like to see some data backing up that claim. I mean this. It would be amazing, if there were a cheap, reliable way to sustain all energy via solar - since the world leaders in solar energy production can only manage around 7% from solar.
- taneq 10y ago
  So why are they fighting so hard to build hydro dams when they could so easily and cheaply run off solar instead?
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    I bet it is because they want to operate mines also when it is dark. I'm interested if millettjon has any other explanations.
    - savanaly 10y ago
      If that were true then solar panels really aren't that cheap. Having to run your mines inefficiently should be counted as a cost when comparing the two. Doesn't mean that solar panels isn't still the best thing, of course, just that his assertion that they're super cheap for the power companies is false.
  - millettjon 10y ago
    They are starting to ramp up solar only in the last year or two. Endesa, the main hydro company, recently gave up fighting to construct 5 dams in the south due to persistent opposition over the last several years. Hopefully this will accelerate the solar deployments even more. The main mining company CODELCO is state owned. Endesa and CODELCO basically try to do whatever they feel like unless there is enough grass roots opposition. There is also a huge potential for wind generation in Chile which they are only starting to use.
dec0dedab0de 10y ago
I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.
- hguant 10y ago
  It's actually a really old idea. Sadly, not one that gets a lot of press, as it's not very sexy to talk about dead Greeks (except to reject them). https://orwell1627.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/aristotles-purpose-of-life/ https://orwell1627.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/aristotles-purpo...
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    Eudaimonia is more like "ethics for virtuous and stable society" rather than saying very much about human relationship with the ecosystem. in the ancient world the human relationship with the ecosystem was extremely different than it is now.
    - hguant 10y ago
      Right, but the core principle underlying all that is that human happiness is a good in and of itself, and a virtuous and stable society is good only in that it allows for the greatest potential growth of human happiness.
      - forthefuture 10y ago
        Well I'd much rather have Advancement over Happiness. We can be happy our entire lives but if everyones dies before 100 and humanity never goes anywhere I wouldn't consider that a successful society. Happiness is masturbating 24/7 until you die. If you truly believe that is the goal of humanity I can't help but disagree.
        metaphorm 10y ago
sandworm101 10y ago
As I've said many times on hackernews, hydro power isn't carbon free. Land and trees are flooded to support dams. That means a reduction in carbon uptake, less room for bambi and lots of other issues. It's akin to clearcutting a forest, but at least after a clearcut the forest grows back. It all depends on what type of area you flood. Empty desert is one thing, coastal rain forest another. Better than coal, but not perfect.
- beat 10y ago
  The power output of a hydro dam, relative to the lost land and its plants, is many orders of magnitude improvement. It's a massive win in terms of carbon footprint.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    And the lake is not dead - its just a different ecology.
sxcurry 10y ago
I have solar at home and it's extremely reliable. For the last 11 years, it has generated electricity 100% of the time the sun was shining. Oh, maybe you meant something other than reliable?
- maaaats 10y ago
  Probably reactive or controllable. Wind, solar, gas, nuclear etc. cannot be controlled to the degree that opening the gates can. So it can respond better to the energy demands based on time of day.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Pulling out control rods or cranking up the gas turbine are presumably pretty quick. Helping this is the fact that humans aren't all that difficult to predict in terms of energy usage.
  - wyager 10y ago
    Gas and nuclear can both be adjusted to match grid demand.
- zimbu668 10y ago
  "100% of the time the sun was shining" What about the other times?
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Yeah like Night. Where I live in winter the days are about 8 hours long, when I'm at work, so no electricity when I'm home at all.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Where I live, the number of sunshine hours in December varies between 6 and 49 (years 1981-2010), average is 26 hours. That means a bit under one hour per day on average, but sometimes there's a week when the sun doesn't show up at all. Not really a great place to use solar when you need most electricity, although on the average we get more sunlight hours than Central Europe. We just get them when there is less need for electricity.
corecoder 10y ago
> hold up against natural disasters That may not be enough, though[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam
gotofritz 10y ago
The problem with hydro is that they don't last forever, and when they get old you have to spend a fortune maintaining them, because you can't just "switch them off", especially if in the meantime they've built cities where the river used to be... http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas-biggest-dams-is-falling-apart http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas-bigges...
- cwbrandsma 10y ago
  They can be switched off, depending on how they were built. During the building process you have to create a diversion tunnel, as the water has to keep flowing while you are building them. They should also have ways of draining the reservoir. Also in my state (Idaho, which is largely powered by dams) we have removed a some of the older ones. I don't have any source materials for you, but I had to go thru a ton of dam tours as a kid to learn how the dams worked. We have also had a dam burst (Idaho Falls with the Teton Dam). But every dam is unique, you certainly cannot account for all of them. Also, dealing with the flood plain, which the dams protect against, that is another story.
compute_me 10y ago
Here is a little bit of background why hydro can be seen as less carbon neutral than say wind or solar: http://www.ecowatch.com/the-hydropower-methane-bomb-no-one-wants-to-talk-about-1882106648.html http://www.ecowatch.com/the-hydropower-methane-bomb-no-one-w...
- mason240 10y ago
  It might be, but is still more practical. Both solar and wind also rely on mining, something environmentalists also oppose.
metaphorm 10y ago
> nature itself is inherently violent, dangerous and in a constant state of flux beware the anthropic fallacy. nature itself just is. violent is a human value judgment. danger is subjective and situational. "constant flux" is itself a contradiction in terms. some ecosystems are long-term stable, others change rapidly even in the short term, and others get suddenly disrupted by unpredictable events.
nbardy 10y ago
> I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Whether or not someone agrees with your idea of the purpose of life is not the only cause they have for decision making. Even the very idea of "human flourishing and happiness" means something different to everyone. Personally I cannot imagine myself flourishing or being happy in world were we have destroyed the beauty around us. Here is an excerpt from the book "A Last Chance to See" by Douglas, which does a much better job than explaining the ideas of conservation. > "In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction. But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks? Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most. Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving. There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.” Studying nature shows us just how resilient plants and animals have been to the intense changes in environment and finding and endless stream of ways to survive. However, it has become increasingly even more so since this passage was written that the human race may be the one hurdle life on earth may not be able to overcome. Human flourishing and happiness itself is reliant on the very planet we currently occupy and it's no longer enough to try and temper our environmental impact. We need to minimize it. I'm not well informed enough to have an opinion on hydro verse solar, but I can say its incredibly valuable and important there are people who hold different ideas on the importance of conservation.
pkulak 10y ago
I don't think you even need to invoke such a controversial argument as "all non-human lives don't matter". Drastic climate change is likely to impact every species. Considering the vast amount of cheap, safe, carbon-free power that's available from hydro, it's probably the right call for salmon to take one for the team here. I live in the heart of the PNW and most of my power comes from COAL. The rest; natural gas. It's insane. We could power three states by damming a few rivers. I'm not an expert, but I also think it's more than possible to do that in a way that still let's salmon spawn, depending on how well things like fish ladders and run-of-the-river actually works. I'm pretty sure BC get's the majority of their power from hydro, and from how much time local fishermen spend up there, the salmon are doing just fine.
- jordanlev 10y ago
  There are lots of dams in the Pacific Northwest... just drive along the Columbia river, for example.
- madhato 10y ago
  In British Columbia (BC) we get 86% of our power from hydro.
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  At least regarding the Columbia and its tributaries, British Columbia is much further upstream away from the ocean, so the salmon impacts of building dams there are less. At least that's my understanding. Also, I expect their dams were built later and thus with fish ladders. (Grand Coulee has no fish ladders whatsoever, being built mostly in the 1930's.) It's not just about the salmon, although I believe they're worth considering in and of themselves. It's also about the cultures and practices, the foods, etc., that have diminished since the dams interfered with the salmon run. Fish ladders are vastly better than nothing, but even then the rates of passage are significantly less than on an undammed river. As far as generating mix, it really depends where you live. East of the Cascades there's plenty of wind, plus the Columbia and Snake rivers for hydroelectric. Not to mention a bit of nuclear. Pretty cool map here: http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1 http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1
jdright 10y ago
> whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Because humans are gods. Right. Unbelievable.
mhurron 10y ago
Dams are an ecological disaster, just as much as burning fossil fuels. Dams have directly caused or are causing the extinction of several species around the world, that is not counting all the permanent environmental impacts a dam creates. Hydro is a green energy source if you define green as simply not burning fuel.
- chki 10y ago
  But the big difference is that the effects are almost completely local and not anywhere as threatening on a global scale compared to burning stuff and causing everything to heat up. This is actually a decisive point because whoever builds the dam will also lookout for the effects it causes and be more reasonable. On top of that I think that the extinction of species is really not comparable to global warming, which will probably cause mass extinctions on a scale that has not been seen before in human history.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Actually, if mhurron is referring to what I think they are, then it can be fairly global. Think fish migration and spawning, such as with Salmon. Global Salmon population is very susceptible to being disrupted by blocking rivers. That said, I believe there are modern ways to address this problem.
    - dragontamer 10y ago
      Every dam worth a damn has fish ladders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder Poorly built dams can damage the environment. Except you know, its 2016 and we've figured out how to preserve the environment while providing clean energy now.
      - mastax 10y ago
        The wikipedia article links to this: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_on_us_dams_are_not_effective/2636/ http://e360.yale.edu/feature/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_... Not exactly a glowing recommendation. It seems a lot like those 'nature bridges' over highways that animals never use. A nice idea if it worked, but they don't.
vidarh 10y ago
Hydro not just alters ecosystems. It also kills a lot of people in construction and maintenance accidents. As you point out, it's vital they're well-constructed, but so far we've not done very well in that respect. E.g. nuclear is far safer per unit of energy output.
knz 10y ago
> .. energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable. Is that assumption always true in the age of climate change? New Zealand gets about 50 to 60% of its energy from hydro and there have been concerns about the viability of it during periods of drought.
adamb_ 10y ago
My understanding is that even if we were dam up all the rivers in the world, the power generated wouldn't come close to covering the current global demand
Arnt 10y ago
Hydro is as reliable as the rain. When I was a child (and 97% of the power came from hydro) the newspapers would sometimes predict power shortage in the summer because there hadn't been much snow in the winter, and sometimes they predicted low power prices because of an abundance of snow. In a way hydro is rather like solar power, which is as reliable as the sun, and wind, which is as reliable as the wind. I know of places where the sun shines reliably and there isn't much dust, and I know of places where it doesn't. I know of places where the wind blows fairly steadily from roughly the same direction most days, and I know of places where it doesn't.
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_. The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it saved up from 30 years ago, behind the hoover and glen canyon dams. That is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE past what we can do with solar. Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.
  - Arnt 10y ago
    Or I can come back to you when technology allows timeshifting usage to match availability. Even if you want to run a factory 24×7, you don't have to run the most power-hungry parts at an invariant pace, see?
    - bpodgursky 10y ago
      ? Except you're talking about _seasonal_ differences in sunlight availability. I'm really glad I'll be able to run my power-hungry electronics like a refrigerator during peak production times, like during the spring! We'll just have to make sure that people go to the hospital during probably-non-uninterruptible power windows. Sorry, but you're dealing with human beings and actual society, not a car factory. Leave me out of your plans.
      - syncsynchalt 10y ago
ivan_gammel 10y ago
The biggest real problem with hydro is proper assessment of impact of local climate change and damage on ecosystems. You can find some readings about the effects of big hydropower projects in Siberia or Middle Asia. In the latter construction of hydropower plant may even become a casus belli due to deficite of water and impact on agriculture of the countries down the river.
- pc2g4d 10y ago
  I think that has more to do with the diversion of water for irrigation. For example, the almost-total vanishing of the Aral Sea.
  - ivan_gammel 10y ago
    That's also an issue, but I'm talking about projects like Rogun Dam in Tajikistan, which received strong objections from Uzbekistan. There's also the Shuren Dam project which may damage ecosystem of Baikal.
sliverstorm 10y ago
I think environmentalists would be more accepting of dams if we didn't dam just about every damn river.
ocschwar 10y ago
The really nice thing about hydro is that it's nimble enough to make up for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Costa Rica's hydro capacity is enough to enable a huge expansion of solar and wind not only in-house but in the neighboring countries.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
All Adam Curtis films are thought-provoking ( he's as easy to disagree with as he is to agree with ) but the one that covers this is "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace". This film "accuses" modern environmentalism of being an artifact of systems-think that arises from the computer industry. It thinks that the whole idea of a perfect environmental equilibrium comes from that. It also marries "computer perfectionism" to Neoliberalism in interesting ways. I don't recall if he brings up Adam Smith's "Man of System" as a "villain" here but that seems obvious enough. I think it rather ignores people like John Muir but it's an interesting idea and worth chewing over. Obviously, I suffer deeply from this same bias myself :)
Chathamization 10y ago
Dams have an issue with methane emissions (a potent greenhouse gas)[1]. If I remember right, the type of dam also matters, and there are numerous problems with megadams in particular. [1]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-emissions-may-swell-from-behind-dams/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-emissions-...

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

They can't rely 100% precisely because hydro is unreliable. A dry season and it runs down (which it did). And dams - isn't Mosul going to be destroyed soon because its dam requires constant maintenance (a clay curtain pumped into the porous bedrock) which hasn't happened since Desert Storm?

jfaucett 10y ago
"They can't rely 100% precisely because hydro is unreliable." True in an absolute sense but in comparison to solar and wind hydro is extremely reliable, and can be used to power the grid when all other energy sources fail [1,2] As far as Mosul I'm unsure, maybe someone else more informed can chime in on the actual state of affairs there since wikipedia/google turned up multiple contradicting results for me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Advantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Advantages [2] http://www.hydro.org/why-hydro/reliable/ http://www.hydro.org/why-hydro/reliable/
celticninja 10y ago
Mosul is hardly an example of a well engineered dam though built in 1984 and falling to pieces. The Hoover Dam was built in 1933 and is not in need of pulling down.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  If maintenance were interrupted (social upheaval) then Hoover too would fail. It take maintenance to keep it running - in particular mussels would foul and stop the turbines in a few seasons.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > If maintenance were interrupted (social upheaval) then Hoover too would fail. Probably not in your lifetime let alone in a generation. Mosul's an issue because the substrate is not suitable for dam building (it's soluble gypsum, so it just keeps eroding because dam foundations kind-of tend to be around water) so the dam has to be continuously grouted to prevent it from failing.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Add Mosul holds 2.5 million people on a floodplain. When the dam fails catastrophically, it will be a bloodbath. It'll happen in the next few years.
  - cr1895 10y ago
    They're not really comparable are they? It's not whether the turbines in the dam will continue to generate electricity, but whether or not the dam itself is structurally sound. My limited understanding is that the Mosul dam is not, while Hoover will outlast us.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The risk in the case of Mosul is failure of the dam face itself. Not merely the generating equipment. Hoover faces no threats of similar magnitude.
lj3 10y ago
It depends on where the dams are. I live in the North Eastern USA. Most of this part of the country (and eastern Canada) are powered by hydro. Niagara Falls doesn't turn off. Neither do dams, really. Even in the winter (-30F) and during summer droughts, they have water passing over the turbines. None of the dams in my area have needed maintenance in the time I've been alive (about 30 years). It's cleaner and more reliable than any other kind of energy production on the planet including coal and oil. Nothing is 100% reliable, but hydro is the closest we're likely to get.
imgabe 10y ago
Everything requires maintenance. Solar panels have to be cleaned or replaced if they get scratched. You have to clean the bird carcasses out of the windmills. Nuclear requires constant supervision. There's no maintenance-free option.
- vacri 10y ago
  Coal also requires humans to transport lots of fuel to it, and lots of big machinery to get that fuel.
greenshackle 10y ago
It depends. Where I'm from we run on 97% hydro power and we never run out.

jackmott 10y ago

nature is inherently violent yes, but the effect of humans on the rest of the species on the planet is equivalent to extinction events that are rare on geologic time scales (already!) and some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones.

jfaucett 10y ago
"...some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones." That sentence is horrible. We're talking about living, breathing, thinking human beings not "sheeple". And to equate people who have dreams, hopes, and aspirations to a lot of mindless animals whose only desire is to destroy the planet and play on iphones is an egregious misrepresentation of reality. If we want to make our planet better for all its inhabitants we need to be clear and honest about the facts and our goals. I happen to think our primary goal should be human flourishing, self-actualization and happiness. If you think our primary goal should be the elimination of species extinction or something else - I don't want to put words in your mouth - we could discuss that...
- 7952 10y ago
  Ecological protection is not necessarily mutually exclusive with human development. And human beings are massively reliant on those ecosystems in subtle and important ways. Your point seems like a false dichotomy. We just need to approach problems in an environmentally literate way.
  - sebastos 10y ago
    It's not a false dichotomy, because the above poster isn't presenting a dichotomy at all. We'd all like to see human flourishing AND ecological protection. Sometimes those goals interfere with each other, and sometimes they don't. In the cases where they do, we can ask: which is our _highest_ priority? If we had the choice between saving the human species and nuking the planet, or going extinct to save the extant ecosystem on Earth, which should we choose? That's the point being made. Nobody's trying to say that all actions live on a 1-D spectrum between "environment preserving" and "human promoting". That's obviously untrue. I don't think anybody needs reminding that humans can't flourish if the Earth is a barren desert.

millettjon 10y ago

Unreliability of wind power generate can be largely mitigated by interconnecting disparate wind farms spread over a large area.

ThomPete 10y ago
Which requires large areas which isn't always possible. I don't think this will be properly solved until we have proper fuel-cells
antr 10y ago
Energy investor here with a pretty large wind portfolio (1GW) under management. This geographically dispersed portfolio idea doesn't really work. Due to different wind patterns, and wind types, a wind portfolio cannot be relied on for stable power generation... this is ignoring power curves, availability, transmission losses, network balancing, node bottlenecks, etc. Take as an example the entire wind capacity in Ireland, and the curtailment issues this generates.
- beat 10y ago
  Are you looking into storage as well? The engineer in me says caching is the way to convert an intermittent source to a steady load. I'm really curious what a wind investor is thinking about this!
  - antr 10y ago
    Have we looked at it, yes. Are we investing in battery storage, no. It's too early for us to invest in this technology. This should be interesting for energy investors with a slightly higher risk appetite.
    - beat 10y ago
      Ah, that makes sense. It's a very early market. I'm excited for the possibilities, though. If storage can solve the intermittency issue, solar/wind can become baseline load sources more easily, and we'll need far less actual generation in place to maintain the grid. I firmly believe the way out of our power dilemma is just make wind/solar cheaper per kwh than fossil fuels.

millettjon 10y ago

In Chile, the mining companies in the North use a disproportionate amount of energy. They are located in one of the driest deserts in the world and could easily supply their power needs from solar with minimal impact. Instead they continually fight to build dams in pristine temperate rain forest in the South.

jfaucett 10y ago
"could easily supply their power needs from solar with minimal impact." I would really like to see some data backing up that claim. I mean this. It would be amazing, if there were a cheap, reliable way to sustain all energy via solar - since the world leaders in solar energy production can only manage around 7% from solar.
taneq 10y ago
So why are they fighting so hard to build hydro dams when they could so easily and cheaply run off solar instead?
- ptaipale 10y ago
  I bet it is because they want to operate mines also when it is dark. I'm interested if millettjon has any other explanations.
  - savanaly 10y ago
    If that were true then solar panels really aren't that cheap. Having to run your mines inefficiently should be counted as a cost when comparing the two. Doesn't mean that solar panels isn't still the best thing, of course, just that his assertion that they're super cheap for the power companies is false.
- millettjon 10y ago
  They are starting to ramp up solar only in the last year or two. Endesa, the main hydro company, recently gave up fighting to construct 5 dams in the south due to persistent opposition over the last several years. Hopefully this will accelerate the solar deployments even more. The main mining company CODELCO is state owned. Endesa and CODELCO basically try to do whatever they feel like unless there is enough grass roots opposition. There is also a huge potential for wind generation in Chile which they are only starting to use.

dec0dedab0de 10y ago

I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.

hguant 10y ago
It's actually a really old idea. Sadly, not one that gets a lot of press, as it's not very sexy to talk about dead Greeks (except to reject them). https://orwell1627.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/aristotles-purpose-of-life/ https://orwell1627.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/aristotles-purpo...
- metaphorm 10y ago
  Eudaimonia is more like "ethics for virtuous and stable society" rather than saying very much about human relationship with the ecosystem. in the ancient world the human relationship with the ecosystem was extremely different than it is now.
  - hguant 10y ago
    Right, but the core principle underlying all that is that human happiness is a good in and of itself, and a virtuous and stable society is good only in that it allows for the greatest potential growth of human happiness.
    - forthefuture 10y ago
      Well I'd much rather have Advancement over Happiness. We can be happy our entire lives but if everyones dies before 100 and humanity never goes anywhere I wouldn't consider that a successful society. Happiness is masturbating 24/7 until you die. If you truly believe that is the goal of humanity I can't help but disagree.
      - metaphorm 10y ago

sandworm101 10y ago

As I've said many times on hackernews, hydro power isn't carbon free. Land and trees are flooded to support dams. That means a reduction in carbon uptake, less room for bambi and lots of other issues. It's akin to clearcutting a forest, but at least after a clearcut the forest grows back. It all depends on what type of area you flood. Empty desert is one thing, coastal rain forest another. Better than coal, but not perfect.

beat 10y ago
The power output of a hydro dam, relative to the lost land and its plants, is many orders of magnitude improvement. It's a massive win in terms of carbon footprint.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  And the lake is not dead - its just a different ecology.

sxcurry 10y ago

I have solar at home and it's extremely reliable. For the last 11 years, it has generated electricity 100% of the time the sun was shining. Oh, maybe you meant something other than reliable?

maaaats 10y ago
Probably reactive or controllable. Wind, solar, gas, nuclear etc. cannot be controlled to the degree that opening the gates can. So it can respond better to the energy demands based on time of day.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Pulling out control rods or cranking up the gas turbine are presumably pretty quick. Helping this is the fact that humans aren't all that difficult to predict in terms of energy usage.
- wyager 10y ago
  Gas and nuclear can both be adjusted to match grid demand.
zimbu668 10y ago
"100% of the time the sun was shining" What about the other times?
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Yeah like Night. Where I live in winter the days are about 8 hours long, when I'm at work, so no electricity when I'm home at all.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Where I live, the number of sunshine hours in December varies between 6 and 49 (years 1981-2010), average is 26 hours. That means a bit under one hour per day on average, but sometimes there's a week when the sun doesn't show up at all. Not really a great place to use solar when you need most electricity, although on the average we get more sunlight hours than Central Europe. We just get them when there is less need for electricity.

corecoder 10y ago

> hold up against natural disasters That may not be enough, though[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

gotofritz 10y ago

The problem with hydro is that they don't last forever, and when they get old you have to spend a fortune maintaining them, because you can't just "switch them off", especially if in the meantime they've built cities where the river used to be... http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas-biggest-dams-is-falling-apart http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas-bigges...

cwbrandsma 10y ago
They can be switched off, depending on how they were built. During the building process you have to create a diversion tunnel, as the water has to keep flowing while you are building them. They should also have ways of draining the reservoir. Also in my state (Idaho, which is largely powered by dams) we have removed a some of the older ones. I don't have any source materials for you, but I had to go thru a ton of dam tours as a kid to learn how the dams worked. We have also had a dam burst (Idaho Falls with the Teton Dam). But every dam is unique, you certainly cannot account for all of them. Also, dealing with the flood plain, which the dams protect against, that is another story.

compute_me 10y ago

Here is a little bit of background why hydro can be seen as less carbon neutral than say wind or solar: http://www.ecowatch.com/the-hydropower-methane-bomb-no-one-wants-to-talk-about-1882106648.html http://www.ecowatch.com/the-hydropower-methane-bomb-no-one-w...

mason240 10y ago
It might be, but is still more practical. Both solar and wind also rely on mining, something environmentalists also oppose.

metaphorm 10y ago

> nature itself is inherently violent, dangerous and in a constant state of flux beware the anthropic fallacy. nature itself just is. violent is a human value judgment. danger is subjective and situational. "constant flux" is itself a contradiction in terms. some ecosystems are long-term stable, others change rapidly even in the short term, and others get suddenly disrupted by unpredictable events.

nbardy 10y ago

> I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Whether or not someone agrees with your idea of the purpose of life is not the only cause they have for decision making. Even the very idea of "human flourishing and happiness" means something different to everyone. Personally I cannot imagine myself flourishing or being happy in world were we have destroyed the beauty around us. Here is an excerpt from the book "A Last Chance to See" by Douglas, which does a much better job than explaining the ideas of conservation. > "In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction. But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks? Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most. Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving. There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.” Studying nature shows us just how resilient plants and animals have been to the intense changes in environment and finding and endless stream of ways to survive. However, it has become increasingly even more so since this passage was written that the human race may be the one hurdle life on earth may not be able to overcome. Human flourishing and happiness itself is reliant on the very planet we currently occupy and it's no longer enough to try and temper our environmental impact. We need to minimize it. I'm not well informed enough to have an opinion on hydro verse solar, but I can say its incredibly valuable and important there are people who hold different ideas on the importance of conservation.

pkulak 10y ago

I don't think you even need to invoke such a controversial argument as "all non-human lives don't matter". Drastic climate change is likely to impact every species. Considering the vast amount of cheap, safe, carbon-free power that's available from hydro, it's probably the right call for salmon to take one for the team here. I live in the heart of the PNW and most of my power comes from COAL. The rest; natural gas. It's insane. We could power three states by damming a few rivers. I'm not an expert, but I also think it's more than possible to do that in a way that still let's salmon spawn, depending on how well things like fish ladders and run-of-the-river actually works. I'm pretty sure BC get's the majority of their power from hydro, and from how much time local fishermen spend up there, the salmon are doing just fine.

jordanlev 10y ago
There are lots of dams in the Pacific Northwest... just drive along the Columbia river, for example.
madhato 10y ago
In British Columbia (BC) we get 86% of our power from hydro.
pc2g4d 10y ago
At least regarding the Columbia and its tributaries, British Columbia is much further upstream away from the ocean, so the salmon impacts of building dams there are less. At least that's my understanding. Also, I expect their dams were built later and thus with fish ladders. (Grand Coulee has no fish ladders whatsoever, being built mostly in the 1930's.) It's not just about the salmon, although I believe they're worth considering in and of themselves. It's also about the cultures and practices, the foods, etc., that have diminished since the dams interfered with the salmon run. Fish ladders are vastly better than nothing, but even then the rates of passage are significantly less than on an undammed river. As far as generating mix, it really depends where you live. East of the Cascades there's plenty of wind, plus the Columbia and Snake rivers for hydroelectric. Not to mention a bit of nuclear. Pretty cool map here: http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1 http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WA#tabs-1

jdright 10y ago

> whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness. Because humans are gods. Right. Unbelievable.

mhurron 10y ago

Dams are an ecological disaster, just as much as burning fossil fuels. Dams have directly caused or are causing the extinction of several species around the world, that is not counting all the permanent environmental impacts a dam creates. Hydro is a green energy source if you define green as simply not burning fuel.

chki 10y ago
But the big difference is that the effects are almost completely local and not anywhere as threatening on a global scale compared to burning stuff and causing everything to heat up. This is actually a decisive point because whoever builds the dam will also lookout for the effects it causes and be more reasonable. On top of that I think that the extinction of species is really not comparable to global warming, which will probably cause mass extinctions on a scale that has not been seen before in human history.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Actually, if mhurron is referring to what I think they are, then it can be fairly global. Think fish migration and spawning, such as with Salmon. Global Salmon population is very susceptible to being disrupted by blocking rivers. That said, I believe there are modern ways to address this problem.
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    Every dam worth a damn has fish ladders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder Poorly built dams can damage the environment. Except you know, its 2016 and we've figured out how to preserve the environment while providing clean energy now.
    - mastax 10y ago
      The wikipedia article links to this: http://e360.yale.edu/feature/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_on_us_dams_are_not_effective/2636/ http://e360.yale.edu/feature/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_... Not exactly a glowing recommendation. It seems a lot like those 'nature bridges' over highways that animals never use. A nice idea if it worked, but they don't.

vidarh 10y ago

Hydro not just alters ecosystems. It also kills a lot of people in construction and maintenance accidents. As you point out, it's vital they're well-constructed, but so far we've not done very well in that respect. E.g. nuclear is far safer per unit of energy output.

knz 10y ago

> .. energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable. Is that assumption always true in the age of climate change? New Zealand gets about 50 to 60% of its energy from hydro and there have been concerns about the viability of it during periods of drought.

adamb_ 10y ago

My understanding is that even if we were dam up all the rivers in the world, the power generated wouldn't come close to covering the current global demand

Arnt 10y ago

Hydro is as reliable as the rain. When I was a child (and 97% of the power came from hydro) the newspapers would sometimes predict power shortage in the summer because there hadn't been much snow in the winter, and sometimes they predicted low power prices because of an abundance of snow. In a way hydro is rather like solar power, which is as reliable as the sun, and wind, which is as reliable as the wind. I know of places where the sun shines reliably and there isn't much dust, and I know of places where it doesn't. I know of places where the wind blows fairly steadily from roughly the same direction most days, and I know of places where it doesn't.

bpodgursky 10y ago
No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_. The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it saved up from 30 years ago, behind the hoover and glen canyon dams. That is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE past what we can do with solar. Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.
- Arnt 10y ago
  Or I can come back to you when technology allows timeshifting usage to match availability. Even if you want to run a factory 24×7, you don't have to run the most power-hungry parts at an invariant pace, see?
  - bpodgursky 10y ago
    ? Except you're talking about _seasonal_ differences in sunlight availability. I'm really glad I'll be able to run my power-hungry electronics like a refrigerator during peak production times, like during the spring! We'll just have to make sure that people go to the hospital during probably-non-uninterruptible power windows. Sorry, but you're dealing with human beings and actual society, not a car factory. Leave me out of your plans.
    - syncsynchalt 10y ago

ivan_gammel 10y ago

The biggest real problem with hydro is proper assessment of impact of local climate change and damage on ecosystems. You can find some readings about the effects of big hydropower projects in Siberia or Middle Asia. In the latter construction of hydropower plant may even become a casus belli due to deficite of water and impact on agriculture of the countries down the river.

pc2g4d 10y ago
I think that has more to do with the diversion of water for irrigation. For example, the almost-total vanishing of the Aral Sea.
- ivan_gammel 10y ago
  That's also an issue, but I'm talking about projects like Rogun Dam in Tajikistan, which received strong objections from Uzbekistan. There's also the Shuren Dam project which may damage ecosystem of Baikal.

sliverstorm 10y ago

I think environmentalists would be more accepting of dams if we didn't dam just about every damn river.

ocschwar 10y ago

The really nice thing about hydro is that it's nimble enough to make up for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Costa Rica's hydro capacity is enough to enable a huge expansion of solar and wind not only in-house but in the neighboring countries.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

All Adam Curtis films are thought-provoking ( he's as easy to disagree with as he is to agree with ) but the one that covers this is "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace". This film "accuses" modern environmentalism of being an artifact of systems-think that arises from the computer industry. It thinks that the whole idea of a perfect environmental equilibrium comes from that. It also marries "computer perfectionism" to Neoliberalism in interesting ways. I don't recall if he brings up Adam Smith's "Man of System" as a "villain" here but that seems obvious enough. I think it rather ignores people like John Muir but it's an interesting idea and worth chewing over. Obviously, I suffer deeply from this same bias myself :)

Chathamization 10y ago

Dams have an issue with methane emissions (a potent greenhouse gas)[1]. If I remember right, the type of dam also matters, and there are numerous problems with megadams in particular. [1]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-emissions-may-swell-from-behind-dams/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-emissions-...