Exploring the links between hydropower projects, climate change and self-interest

Africa is caught in a scramble for increased energy capacity and security of supply. In many instances, energy planners, governments, funding institutions and development aid providers are turning to hydropower as the answer. But is it?

Scientists are warning that the world’s rivers have become the most endangered natural systems, and that climate change will threaten them even further. In the interim, study after study seems to be questioning the sustainability of hydropower and the negative effect that hydroelectricity generation is having on the environment
and communities.

Yet governments, major multinational corporations, resource-hungry countries such as China, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the World Bank and others are eagerly encouraging, funding and building hydroelectric plants all over Africa and the rest of the world.

Roger Gaillard, a lead specialist with the AfDB’s Energy, Environment and Climate Change division, recently disclosed that the Bank has provided some US$300 million for hydropower and dam projects in Africa over the last five years.

He added that the capital costs for these projects were up to four times larger with the contributions from investors, governments and other donors.

In October, it was announced that construction on Africa’s second largest dam is about to start, with funding from the AfDB, the governments of Italy and Kenya, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa. The dam is being built in Kenya and will be used for irrigation and hydropower purposes, among others.

Meanwhile, massive dams are being built elsewhere in Africa. To name a few: Gibe III, at a cost of US$2.2bn on Ethiopia’s Omo River, to be completed in 2013; the US$705-million Kajbar Dam on the Nile River in Sudan; and the US729-million Bui Dam on Ghana’s Black Volta River, to be completed by 2013.

A common thread that runs through these projects is the Chinese money, and Chinese electricity and construction companies that are behind them. A recent study done by Bloomberg and the Californian environmental group, International Rivers, showed that major Chinese companies have completed or are participating in hydropower projects to the tune of at least US$9.3bn in various African countries.

By September this year, Chinese firms were involved in building at least 251 dams in 68 countries across the world, according to International Rivers.

However, the sustainability of many of these schemes is increasingly being questioned.

In a paper published in September in the journal PLoS Biology, John Matthews, director of fresh water and adaptation at Conservation International, and others noted that the world’s dams are being built according to water flow conditions that are rapidly changing or that no longer apply due to climate change.

Matthews et al. warn that fundamentally flawed dam-building decisions and methods risk exacerbating climate-initiated changes. This, they say, could lead to economic catastrophes.

Kenya is one country that has firsthand experience of the negative effects of climatic conditions on the reliable supply
of hydropower.

Kenyan authorities are seeking to switch from the country’s largely hydro-dependent power generation to that which it believes will be more reliable geothermal and wind-powered plants. The reason for this, the government says, is the negative effects of climate change on hydro-generation – something that has caused substantial ecological damage.

The country’s hydropower systems have come under severe pressure due to East Africa’s worst drought in decades as well as ongoing deforestation.

Ghana, too, for example, plans to construct a 400-megawatt thermal plant in the next three years to reduce its over-reliance on hydropower generation – its hydropower supply has become unreliable because of the effects of climate change.

Also this year, the persistent drought in Tanzania – ascribed to climate change – has depleted water levels in the Great Ruaha River, affecting hydropower plants and causing serious power cuts that are negatively affecting the country’s economy. Deforestation of the river delta by villagers is exacerbating the water loss.

As large parts of Central China this year experienced a devastating drought, local villagers and farmers say that droughts have become more frequent and more severe since the completion of construction on the massive Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in 2003.

In an article published in Progress magazine, Terri Hathaway and Lori Pottinger of International Rivers Network wrote that “Africa’s large dams (more than 1 270 at last count) have consistently been built at the expense of rural communities, who have been forced to sacrifice their lands and livelihoods to them, yet have reaped few benefits.

“Large hydro dams in Sudan, Senegal, Kenya, Zambia/Zimbabwe and Ghana have brought considerable social, environmental and economic damage to Africa, and have left a trail of ‘development-induced poverty’ in their wake. Project benefits have been consistently overstated and inequitably shared.

“Large hydropower dams also reinforce centralised power grids, which disproportionately benefit industry and higher income groups, and widen income disparities (and energy inequities) between Africa’s poor and Africa’s elite,” they wrote.

They further point out that between 1998 and 2000, as part of an unprecedented global process to review large dams and their development effectiveness, the independent World Commission on Dams (WCD), which was based in Cape Town and headed by the late South African Water Affairs minister Kader Asmal, found the price paid by communities for the benefits of large dams to be “unacceptable”.

According to Hathaway and Pottinger, the WCD fulfilled its mandate to develop internationally acceptable criteria, guidelines and standards for planning dams; but the World Bank, the dam industry and most governments refused to abide by them, thus setting the stage for more destructive dam projects in Africa.

Dr Christopher Taylor of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the United Kingdom has warned of the potentially negative effect on weather and climate patterns of hydropower dams in the Niger Delta in West Africa. During September, the delta’s wetlands extend to some 30 000 square kilometres, feeding rainfalls over a much larger region. Yet, existing and proposed dams on the Niger would reduce the river’s flow by almost half, he says.

On the other hand, researchers such as Carole Rosenlund of the Norwegian International Centre for Hydropower; and Byman Hamududu, a PhD research Fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, have argued that while less than 15% of all Africans have access to electricity, and while Africa has enormous hydropower potential, the continent has one of the lowest hydropower utilisation rates.

They believe that exploitation of major African rivers for hydropower generation could alleviate this. They point out that the Congo River, running through the Democratic Republic of Congo, has a potential capacity of over 100 000MW. This is enough to address the energy needs of the entire southern African region, according to them.

And it appears this will, indeed, be a topic for discussion at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks in Durban in December.

A proposed annual US$100-billion climate change fund could be used to help develop the Inga III and Grand Inga hydropower projects in the DRC, some argue. At present, these are essentially white elephants, operating at a low output of around 1 775MW.

Inga III, on the other hand, could generate 4 500MW while Grand Inga could generate 39 000MW. The latter, at a cost of US$80bn, would significantly boost the energy needs of particularly southern Africa, where South Africa’s polluting coal-fired power stations dominate.

But it would benefit other parts of Africa as well: it is projected that transmission lines would run from Grand Inga to South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and a number of other countries.

Hathaway, who is the former Africa programme director of International Rivers, questions this and other projects. In his blog, he asks why the African Conference of Ministers is “calling for projects set to benefit one of the world’s wealthiest corporations rather than the continent’s own citizens? At the top of the plan’s $19-billion list of 14 ‘Priority Projects’ is Inga 3, a hydropower mega-project that would power a massive aluminium smelter to be built by BHP Billiton.

“Also included are the second phase of the notoriously corrupt Lesotho Highlands Water Project (not really an energy project at all, unless you count that a lot of its water will be used to cool dirty coal plants in South Africa); and the contentious Mphanda Nkuwa mega-dam in Mozambique – a country where three times more electricity is consumed by a BHP Billiton aluminium smelter than by Mozambicans.”

He says these types of mega-projects do not alleviate energy poverty but, instead, attract corruption and corporate exploitation, reinforce Africa’s centralised and opaque political systems, and do not create many jobs.

It appears that hydropower – once seen by most as a sustainable and clean energy alternative above reproach – now finds its reputation increasingly being questioned. The final verdict has yet to be delivered.

Stef Terblanche