british Columbia has been building half a dozen new hydro electric power plants per year for the last 20 years. It takes 3-6 years to do the environmental studies. Goats, insects, tadpoles, bears, eagles, fish, plants, you name it, everything is studied to see how it will be impacted. On a recent project they discovered a frog that was on the endangered list actually wasn't endangered at all as it was in every creek in the whole area.

Impacts can be mitigated by creating new habitat.

there are environmental monitors during all construction and weekly reporting to the goverment ministries of fisheries and forests during operation.

The run of river plants only cause unnatural changes in river flows if human life is at risk. Some owners would rather destroy a bearing than kill a fish.

My point is that hydro can operate without much impact on the environment. Flow releases and fish ladders might decrease the absolute amount of energy generated but that small decrease is in the big picture preferable to switching to natural gas for the entirety of the hydro plant capacity.

I don't think any struggles of the pacific salmon or humpback chub can be blamed solely on hydro.

Disclaimer: I program hydro plants for the last 15 years.

Solely? No. Significantly? Yes.

I'll google your new BC hydro, of which I know nothing. See what's what. But that doesn't change the situation with USA's dams.

Further, any hope of restoring the pacific salmon runs requires removing hydro. Among many other measures.

You didn't answer my question. So I'll try to restate it: At what point will we have enough solar and wind capacity to moot hydro?

I can't speak to the chub situation.

I believe salmon runs that have been impacted can be helped without having to remove dams entirely, but I'm an EE not a biologist.

I also don't defend all dams. Many dams have had terrible impacts on people and the environment.

Hydro could be mooted when there is enough battery storage in MWH as there is stored in the potential energy in the water in the reservoirs of the dams.

The economics on batteries aren't there yet. To be able to depend on having x MWH of energy in the battery in 5 years you need a battery that is 10x, or you buy a battery that is only 1.5x but then replace it every year. A project in Hawaii just chose pumped hydro storage over batteries.

I'm more hopeful geothermal will become a strong resource but all of the drilling equipment and expertise is chasing oil.

We cool.

After some quick googling, skim reading, it looks like your govt has tried harder to preserve your salmon runs. Honestly, that's pretty encouraging. And the restoration work on Vancouver Island is exciting.

Since the Columbia (Basin) is also used for irrigation, agriculture, it's been hard, slow work balancing the needs of all the stakeholders. Just guessing: Maybe that's less of a factor for your govt.

Aside: I do think we'll need to be build more reservoirs, cisterns. Higher up. As you know, the snowpack, which used to hold the water, has all but disappeared with climate change. We'll need something to replace that functionality, capacity. So even as an EE, you'll still have a lot of work in the future (assuming you stay with hydro).

Peace.

Great comment. One of the reasons I love HN.

Are we just ignoring the flood control and other positive aspects of many of those dams these days?