{"id":22342,"date":"2016-12-24T20:35:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-25T01:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22342"},"modified":"2016-12-24T20:35:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T01:35:42","slug":"how-to-make-hydropower-more-environmentally-friendly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22342","title":{"rendered":"How to Make Hydropower More Environmentally Friendly"},"content":{"rendered":"

How to Make Hydropower More Environmentally Friendly<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Humanity got its first large-scale electricity thanks to hydropower. On Aug. 26, 1895, water flowing over Niagara Falls was diverted to spin two generators, producing electricity to manufacture aluminum and carborundum. Since then,\u00a0millions of dams<\/a>\u00a0have been built worldwide, transforming the energy of moving water into the energy of moving electrons. When we need it, the water spins magnets past a coil of copper wire to give us heat, light and entertainment.<\/p>\n

The basics of hydropower haven\u2019t changed much in 120 years. But now scientists and engineers are taking a fresh look at hydropower to try to make it more environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because, while hydro provides\u00a085 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the world\u2019s renewable electricity, it comes with a cost. Along with more commonly known issues such as habitat disruption, recent studies suggest reservoirs created by hydroelectric dams are a\u00a0significant source of greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Energy is among those working to make hydropower better for the environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only DOE, but really the entire hydro industry has agreed that more work needs to be done,\u201d says Hoyt Battey, manager of market acceleration and deployment for the agency\u2019s Wind and Water Power Technologies Office. \u201cHydro is going to continue to grow and has a lot of future opportunity that most people just aren\u2019t aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Current global hydropower production is estimated at 1,700 gigawatts, providing about\u00a02 percent<\/a>\u00a0of total electric generating capacity.<\/p>\n

In the U.S. \u2014 where in 2014 hydropower provided\u00a0a little more than 6 percent of total electricity generation<\/a>\u00a0and made up about 48 percent of renewable generation, according to the DOE \u2014 hydropower capacity grew by 1.5 GW in the decade prior to 2015,\u00a0reaching a total of 100 GW<\/a>, according to the Energy Information Administration. (Wind, solar and natural gas capacity grew faster, while coal and oil declined and nuclear was essentially flat.)<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to Make Hydropower More Environmentally Friendly Humanity got its first large-scale electricity thanks to hydropower. On Aug. 26, 1895, water flowing over Niagara Falls was diverted to spin two generators, producing electricity to manufacture aluminum and carborundum. Since then,\u00a0millions of dams\u00a0have been built worldwide, transforming the energy of moving water into the energy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14618,11566,14619,14620],"class_list":["post-22342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-ensue","tag-hydroelectric-power","tag-hydropower","tag-matt-weiser"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22343,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22342\/revisions\/22343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}