Yunnan’s Fast-Paced Large Hydropower Development: A Powershed-Based Approach to Critically Assessing Generation and Consumption Paradigms

Abstract

Southwest China's Yunnan province is evolving into one of the world's largest hydro-power-producing regions. It already rivals the world's largest hydro-producing nations. However, five of Yunnan's six basins are international and therefore its hydropower development is of great academic and geopolitical interest. While the implementation of large projects on Yunnan's three large rivers (Jinsha, Mekong and Nu) is relatively well studied, hydropower development outside these three main streams is hardly known. Here, we identified 128 large hydropower projects (≥50 MW) having a capacity of 16.5 GW, along with another 16.4 GW of other types of power generation, neither of which has been discussed in the academic literature yet. The paper utilizes a powershed approach to study the rapid hydropower development underway in Yunnan, both in its implication and challenges (at basin and administrative level) as well as in its trade-offs within the broader electricity context. Yunnan's power generation and consumption patterns are characterized by diverging interests of local/provincial usage and export utilization. Within the province, the largest (hydro-) power users are energy/electricity intensive industries, which themselves have strong impacts on land use changes. Yunnan is also evolving as a major power exporter, already in 2013 exporting about one-third of its generated electricity mainly to Guangdong's Pearl River Delta. We see a need for a critical revision of those existing generation and consumption paradigms, which includes a rethinking of major development modes, both in terms of future hydropower generation and utilization projects as well as export obligations.

Environmental Impact of Small Hydro Power Plant—A Case Study

“…This is also a contribution of the presented paper. The environmental implications of small and large hydropower projects were also studied by Henning et al [4,5] and Ferreira et al [6]. Mayor et al [7] assessed the differential contributions to the regional energy and water security of large-and small-scale hydropower deployment in the Spanish Duero basin.…”

Comment on ‘An index-based framework for assessing patterns and trends in river fragmentation and flow regulation by global dams at multiple scales’

“…Zarfl (Hennig 2016a, Hennig et al 2016, Hennig et al 2013, in the western part of China's Yunnan Province alone (0.01% of China's territory) there are more hydropower projects than Grill et al mention for the entirety of China.…”

“…Zarfl et al further differentiate between projects under construction (17% in the base year 2010) and planned projects (83% at that time). Further, most new hydropower dams are of diversion type (Hennig et al 2016). The dewatered river section (which is seasonally often totally dewatered) may be much longer than the average river-lengths of HydroROUT's 2.7 km.…”

The role of hydropower in electric power integration of Asian countries

“…The Yunnan province with its largest rivers Yangtze, Mekong and Nu is one of the richest world regions in hydropower resources [12]. In the province there are 128 hydropower objects with a total capacity of 16.5 GW.…”