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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Read moreRelated publications
Letter to IFIs regarding Georgian hydropower plants
Advocacy letter | 23 July, 2009 | Download PDFWe have received the following responses: On July 29, 2009 from EBRD (pdf here). On August 4, 2009 from EIB (pdf here). On August 27, 2009 from World Bank (pdf here).
Dam Big Impact – The energy sector development in Georgia
Briefing | 23 July, 2009 | Download PDFThe energy policy of the Georgian government supported by a number of IFIs, aims at utilising the hydroenergy potential in the country in order to overcome the existing energy crisis. But effectively, this policy has the potential to cause significant negative impact on the environment, to drastically change the social and demographic situation in Georgia’s mountain areas and to devastate the existing cultural heritage.
Risky deal, risky business: the Khudoni hydropower plant, Georgia
Study | 26 June, 2009 | Download PDFThis report reviews documents provided by the Georgian government and the World Bank, and a number of independent research reports regarding the Georgian power sector and highlights the concerns of the local people towards the Khudoni HPP as expressed during the public hearings organized in Svaneti in summer 2008.
