The countries of the Energy Community Treaty have diverse energy mixes, but hydropower has traditionally played a strong role in many of them. Albania is almost completely reliant on dams for its domestic electricity generation, followed by Georgia with an average of 80 per cent of electricity generated by hydropower and Montenegro with an average of 55 per cent.
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Background
The countries of the Energy Community Treaty have diverse energy mixes, but hydropower has traditionally played a strong role in many of them. Albania is almost completely reliant on dams for its domestic electricity generation, followed by Georgia with an average of 80 per cent of electricity generated by hydropower and Montenegro with an average of 55 per cent.
But what started as a strength is becoming a liability. More and more erratic rainfall is exposing how vulnerable hydropower is to climate change, while its damaging impacts on biodiversity, groundwater and sediment transportation are becoming better understood.
This has not stopped decision-makers’ zealous plans to develop the sector, including in countries like Ukraine hydropower has not traditionally played a major role. Decades-old projects are still being pushed against all economic and environmental logic, while a rash of small hydropower plants driven by feed-in tariff schemes has destroyed rivers and streams across southeast Europe.
The good news is that there are alternatives, with lower costs for the environment and also, increasingly, for the public purse, and that resistance to the unnecessary destruction of life-giving rivers is increasing day by day.
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Blog entry | 9 October, 2025At the 15th meeting of the Bern Convention’s Group of Experts on Protected Areas and Ecological Networks – held from 7 to 8 October 2025 in Bar, Montenegro – participants reviewed progress towards establishing the Emerald Network of protected areas. As part of the programme, the group visited Lake Skadar, one of Montenegro’s key Emerald sites, acknowledging the government’s efforts to safeguard this unique ecosystem.
Read moreRelated publications
Environmental and social impacts of the Khudoni hydropower project in Georgia
Study | 31 March, 2014 | Download PDFThe report summarises the findings from a fact-finding mission to villages in the Svaneti region of northwestern Georgia that will be impacted by the Khudoni hydropower project. During the visit 250 people were interviewed, of which around 160 were women.
‘Fools and liars’ – major new report slams mega-dams, as tensions rise over Georgia’s Khudoni project
Bankwatch Mail | 20 March, 2014 |A new report published on March 10 by a team of researchers from the University of Oxford, based on the largest ever study of large hydroelectric dams (245 in 65 countries) has found that in most cases large dams are economically not viable and few, if any, will realise their planned benefits. The study assessed the costs, construction time, and benefits of all large dams built around the world since 1934, and further concluded that the severe cost and construction delays that so often dog large dams (defined in this research as those that exceed 15 metres in height) mean they can be seriously damaging to the economies that attach so much hope to them.
Sustainability criteria for hydropower development
Briefing | 28 August, 2013 | Download PDFAny hydropower project no matter the size can cause negative consequences to water basins, associated ecosystems, to climate and affected communities living along the water basins. A large number of individually acceptable projects can also lead to unacceptably high negative cumulative effects. This briefing lays out sustainability criteria that help taking these concerns into account in the strategic planning and implementation of hydropower developments.
