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Curzon
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Curzon

Date

September 9th, 2005

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Hydro Power

Talk about sustainable development—a stunning 18 countries get 95% or more of their electricity from hydroelectric power!

1.Paraguay: 99.9%
2.Bhutan: 99.9%
3.Congo: 99.7%
4.Zambia: 99.5%
5.Burundi: 99.4%
6.Norway: 99.3%
7.Uruguay: 99.1%
8.Uganda: 99.1%
9.Laos: 98.6%
10.DRC: 98.2%
11.Tajikistan: 98.1%
12.Rwanda: 97.7%
13.Ethiopia: 97.6%
14.Cameroon: 97.3%
15.Albania: 97.1%
16.Mozambique: 97.1%
17.Malawi: 96.7%
18.Ghana: 95%

Comments to this entry

J. Kende
September 9, 2005
3:26 am
Although the majority of those countries don't use very much energy. The problem with hydro is that it doesn't scale with demand.

Well, not this kind of hydro anyway...
Joe
September 9, 2005
3:32 am
Bhutan's power consumption patterns are an example for the world!
Mutantfrog
September 9, 2005
4:24 am
Wow, Norway gets rich off of their fossil fuel deposits and manages to get 99.3% of their energy from hydro! That's absolute genius. Of course their fjordy coastline is what makes it possible, and there are practical reasons why no other first world country makes this list, but it gives a little glimmer of hope that fossil fuel dependency is preventable.

Also don't forget Iceland, which gets a huge chunk of their energy from geothermal, and claims will totally phase out fossil fuels by, I believe, 2020.
Jay
September 9, 2005
6:18 am
This reminds me--by any chance, has the blogger seen this:

"Gorlov's Helical Turbine"
http://tinyurl.com/dv3j4
http://worldchanging.com/archives/002383.html

Wonder if this thing is all it's cut out to be....
Gabriel Mihalache
September 9, 2005
9:56 am
Great, but do you think that those fundamentalist leftist green are satisfied? ... Not in the least! Dams destroy the natural ecosystem of the river, they say.

All this talk of pristine ecosystems, staying eternally the same, is B.S.
IJ
September 9, 2005
11:54 am
From the 'Nationmaster' chart, China's hydropower provided 18.5% of its electricity a couple of years ago. Last year it was "reported":http://www.power-technology.com/projects/xiaolangdi/: "China plans to increase its electric power capacity by between 8% and 9% per year to meet growing demand from both industry and private consumers. More than 17% of China's total electricity production is supplied by hydropower, but *only about 15% of the country's technically feasible hydropower potential has been developed to date*."

In further attempts at self-sufficiency in electricity, China also plans more "nuclear power":http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/GI09Ad02.html.

It is unlikely though that all this activity will reduce China's imports of oil significantly. For comparison, in the UK, hydro and oil each supplied 1% of electricity in 2004.
Joe
September 9, 2005
3:06 pm
Roy: I believe Norway also has the highest fuel prices on the planet (but I could be wrong). Inasmuch as they sell their own oil at home, they tax the living daylights out of it. Most of it gets put on ships and sent elsewhere. Government policy is definitely against fossil fuel consumption and that probably helps to explain all the hydro there (along with the fjords, as you mentioned).

Aside: I recall watching a Japanese network documentary comparing lifestyles in Norway and the USA. It's surprising to see how low the standard of living is in Norway compared to their high GDP per capita; the crazy tax burden there keeps most people living what Americans would consider to be lower middle-class lifestyles.
John
September 9, 2005
3:58 pm
How about not viewing this as an either/or debate. No one would argue (seriously) that our dependence on fossil fuels is not the best. This is so either from a worldwide perspective or even if only from the viewpoint of the U. S.

Thus development of any alternative possiblities should be welcome. Wind, tide, rivers, sun, nuclear (yes even nuclear) can all be of use. What is needed is a more flexible downstream means of using the generated power irrespective of its source. That is, how would one get a small or medium tidal generator into the grid.
J. Kende
September 9, 2005
8:20 pm
I don't know who else here has a subscription to Commentary, but Peter W. Huber & Mark P. Mills have an article in the most recent issue called Getting Over Oil that deals with some of the details involved in all of this pretty well. It focuses on the details of how little the US is actually dependent on foreign oil and repeats a few of the solutions that are now becoming very clear to those of us who make a habit of studying energy policy.

The way forward towards a healthy national energy policy, regardless of the extent of our dependence on foreign oil, is obvious by now.

1. Oil is here to stay for now, but as long as it is here we need to build new refineries asap. The relatively high prices at the pump are helping to shift political will in favor of new refineries.

1a. As long as oil is a major world energy source, and is trading at or above $30 a barrel, alternative sources of oil such as oil shale and tar sands become market viable. The US has the largest deposits of oil in the world in the form of oil shale. Canada has a massive deposit as well in the form of tar sands. If the price per barrel continues to trade high, the US and Canada will become significant oil exporters. This could be stopped by the OPEC nations ramping up production to bring down the price per barrel to a below $30 range, but OPEC production is already very high. Production is also not the only reason why oil is trading so high anyway. Increasing demand in Eastern Europe, China, India, and the rest of the world is likely to make it very hard for OPEC to flood the market with enough cheap oil (again) to sustain prices below $30/barrel.

2. The vast majority of our oil use is in our national fleet of oil consuming vehicles. Transitioning first to hybrid vehicles, in order to maximize the useful value of each gallon of gasoline consumed, and over the longer term to hydrogen, is the best way to reduce our oil dependence. With the current prices for gas, demand for hybrid vehicles is increasing, and the tax credits kicking in this upcoming January probably won't hurt that trend.

3. The majority of this nation's energy use is in the form of electrity, produced overwhelmingly NOT from oil. 97% of our electricty is produced from sources other than oil. Over the last few decades our electricty use (everything other than vehicles, mostly) has increased relative to our oil use (vehicles, mostly). It is currently at about 60%. What we need are clean, safe, inexpensive sources of electricity that scale well with demand (which is likely to increase for a while as our improvements in efficiency are generally translated into better performance rather than lesser consumption). Of all of the options suggested, new nuclear power is the only realistic choice. Pebble bed nuclear reactors are something anyone interested in energy policy should become very familiar with -- whether from the right or the left... from the point of view of economic well being and national security or of environmental concerns and the like. There is no reason why the US should not be a global leader in using our engineering know-how to harness a majority of our electricity from new nuclear energy. As an added bonus, new nuclear power plants would be one of the best methods proposed so far for the large scale production of hydrogen as a fuel source.

4. The price to the consumer for electricty has to come down. The diversification of energy sources for increased generation is just one part of that. We need a concerted effort to modernize our national electricity grids. Building for the more effective trade of energy between existing grids, and for a two way grid allowing for a distributed energy market further down the road, will bring efficiencies that translate into better use of our energy resources. Manage what we have better and we will be less dependent on foreign energy.

...Investment in the research and development of other alternative sources of energy should continue, but they just aren't ready to deliver what we need now and for a while to come. These 4 points above would get the job done.
Albert
September 10, 2005
2:05 pm
btw any of you read on the new fuel efficiency discovery in germany. They discovered it a while ago but its begining to be used now. But it could only be used in Europe for now because US refineries need to refine gasoline to a higher degree before it could be applied here.

"known as the piezo injector valve, boosts performance while reducing fuel consumption up to 20% and cutting carbon dioxide emissions" (excript from article)
http://politics.yahoo.com/s/bw/20050829/bs_bw/b3949077mz054
lirelou
September 13, 2005
7:04 am
Yes, take out Norway and Uruguay, the the point is well made. If you don't have much of an economy, hydroelectric power will do. In 1945 some 95% of electric power in Korea was provided by a single dam (now in North Korea). Today South Korea ranks # 6 on the world's nuclear power scale (20 plants on line, but a few soon coming down) and still draws a respectable amount from hydroelectric power. But thermal power plants remain an important slice of the grid. Much to my regret. My electric bill has shot up to four times what it was last summer.
Mutantfrog
September 13, 2005
2:28 pm
Much better than mere hybrid cars would be plug-in hybrids. That is, hybrids which also have a power cable allowing you to charge the batteries off of house power. Since power plants are burning fuel all night long at the rate required to meet peak daytime demand (output cannot be raised and lowered over such a short time period), a huge amount of fuel is being wasted at night, when all the lights are off. If all cars were plugin hybrids, it would represent a huge fuel savings, since a significiant percentage of miles traveled (mainly local short tripes) could be powered by fuel which is currently being wasted completely.

Lirelou - Interesting to note that today, South Korea gets only 0.8% from hydro, and North Korea gets 71%. Apparently that dam is still going strong.

Japan 8.4%
USA 5.6%
China 18.5% (Does that include the 3 gorges dam or not?)
Canada 57.9%