This week: Water is life…is it also the answer to our energy needs?

It’s the world’s oldest renewable source of power. It’s unlimited, and transforming it into electricity costs next to nothing in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It is water. 

ENVIRONMENT travels to the Pyrenees on the French Spanish border to visit the latest dam built in the area. Small in size it provides electricity to just a few hundred homes but it does so with very little cost to the environment.

 Using an underground river that flows inside one of the mountains, SHEM, GDF Suez built the dam manually over two years. The visual impact is minimal: just a green door on the outside of the mountain and inside some concrete, a few yards of black pipes and a short walkway.

 Unlike other sources of energy, hydropower has the advantage that power stations that run on water can be up and running in just a few minutes. What’s more it’s a cheap source of energy. The newest dam to hit France disrupts little and the benefits would appear to outweigh the risks but this isn’t always the case. Dams can damage. And large hydro power stations have been responsible for flooding entire villages. In Venezuela a new hydroelectric power station looks set to submerge ancient ruins as the government there buts energetic interests ahead of the countries heritage.

 In Europe, most of the hydropower potential has already been exploited. Switzerland is one of the leaders in the field with 50% of its electricity coming from water’s energy. The Alpine country want’s the renewable source to flow beyond its borders however and for a European wide grid to be set up.

 Experts in Switzerland suggest mixing various sources of renewable energy in order to maintain a sustainable level of supply to meet demand. Electricity from renewable sources is difficult to store, so hooking up solar panels and wind turbines to a large network of users makes sense.  When the sun goes in or the wind drops, water would then play a vital role in picking up the slack.