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Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning

Hundreds of dams have been proposed throughout the Amazon basin, one of the world’s largest untapped hydropower frontiers. While hydropower is a potentially clean source of renewable energy, some projects produce high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit electricity generated (carbon intensity)....

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Autores principales: Almeida, Rafael M., Shi, Qinru, Gomes-Selman, Jonathan M., Wu, Xiaojian, Xue, Yexiang, Angarita, Hector, Barros, Nathan, Forsberg, Bruce R., García-Villacorta, Roosevelt, Hamilton, Stephen K., Melack, John M., Montoya, Mariana, Perez, Guillaume, Sethi, Suresh A., Gomes, Carla P., Flecker, Alexander S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6753097/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31537792
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12179-5
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author Almeida, Rafael M.
Shi, Qinru
Gomes-Selman, Jonathan M.
Wu, Xiaojian
Xue, Yexiang
Angarita, Hector
Barros, Nathan
Forsberg, Bruce R.
García-Villacorta, Roosevelt
Hamilton, Stephen K.
Melack, John M.
Montoya, Mariana
Perez, Guillaume
Sethi, Suresh A.
Gomes, Carla P.
Flecker, Alexander S.
author_facet Almeida, Rafael M.
Shi, Qinru
Gomes-Selman, Jonathan M.
Wu, Xiaojian
Xue, Yexiang
Angarita, Hector
Barros, Nathan
Forsberg, Bruce R.
García-Villacorta, Roosevelt
Hamilton, Stephen K.
Melack, John M.
Montoya, Mariana
Perez, Guillaume
Sethi, Suresh A.
Gomes, Carla P.
Flecker, Alexander S.
author_sort Almeida, Rafael M.
collection PubMed
description Hundreds of dams have been proposed throughout the Amazon basin, one of the world’s largest untapped hydropower frontiers. While hydropower is a potentially clean source of renewable energy, some projects produce high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit electricity generated (carbon intensity). Here we show how carbon intensities of proposed Amazon upland dams (median = 39 kg CO(2)eq MWh(−1), 100-year horizon) are often comparable with solar and wind energy, whereas some lowland dams (median = 133 kg CO(2)eq MWh(−1)) may exceed carbon intensities of fossil-fuel power plants. Based on 158 existing and 351 proposed dams, we present a multi-objective optimization framework showing that low-carbon expansion of Amazon hydropower relies on strategic planning, which is generally linked to placing dams in higher elevations and smaller streams. Ultimately, basin-scale dam planning that considers GHG emissions along with social and ecological externalities will be decisive for sustainable energy development where new hydropower is contemplated.
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spelling pubmed-67530972019-09-23 Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning Almeida, Rafael M. Shi, Qinru Gomes-Selman, Jonathan M. Wu, Xiaojian Xue, Yexiang Angarita, Hector Barros, Nathan Forsberg, Bruce R. García-Villacorta, Roosevelt Hamilton, Stephen K. Melack, John M. Montoya, Mariana Perez, Guillaume Sethi, Suresh A. Gomes, Carla P. Flecker, Alexander S. Nat Commun Article Hundreds of dams have been proposed throughout the Amazon basin, one of the world’s largest untapped hydropower frontiers. While hydropower is a potentially clean source of renewable energy, some projects produce high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit electricity generated (carbon intensity). Here we show how carbon intensities of proposed Amazon upland dams (median = 39 kg CO(2)eq MWh(−1), 100-year horizon) are often comparable with solar and wind energy, whereas some lowland dams (median = 133 kg CO(2)eq MWh(−1)) may exceed carbon intensities of fossil-fuel power plants. Based on 158 existing and 351 proposed dams, we present a multi-objective optimization framework showing that low-carbon expansion of Amazon hydropower relies on strategic planning, which is generally linked to placing dams in higher elevations and smaller streams. Ultimately, basin-scale dam planning that considers GHG emissions along with social and ecological externalities will be decisive for sustainable energy development where new hydropower is contemplated. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-09-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6753097/ /pubmed/31537792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12179-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Almeida, Rafael M.
Shi, Qinru
Gomes-Selman, Jonathan M.
Wu, Xiaojian
Xue, Yexiang
Angarita, Hector
Barros, Nathan
Forsberg, Bruce R.
García-Villacorta, Roosevelt
Hamilton, Stephen K.
Melack, John M.
Montoya, Mariana
Perez, Guillaume
Sethi, Suresh A.
Gomes, Carla P.
Flecker, Alexander S.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
title Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
title_full Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
title_fullStr Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
title_full_unstemmed Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
title_short Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of Amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
title_sort reducing greenhouse gas emissions of amazon hydropower with strategic dam planning
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6753097/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31537792
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12179-5
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