China’s Biggest Clean Power Machine Is Misfiring
Climate change is coming for the water that fuels hydroelectric plants, putting decarbonizing plans at risk.
Draining away: China’s Three Gorges Dam.
Source: Bloomberg
It may not get the same attention as solar panels and wind farms, but few pieces of infrastructure are more crucial for the fate of the planet than China’s cascade of hydroelectric plants.
The sector as a whole could power Japan or Russia. Dams in the three biggest provinces for hydro — Sichuan, Yunnan, and Hubei — alone produce nearly as much electricity as every wind turbine in China, and more than twice as much as all the country’s solar arrays. That makes the vagaries of the weather a crucial variable for global carbon emissions. A drought in 2022 helped drive a resurgence of coal consumption, while heavy rains since last year offered the hope that usage of solid fuel might be finally peaking.