Pecologix Political Ecology Blotter

Using a case-study, inductive, narrative approach, this article explores the history, drivers, benefits, and barriers to the Bakun Hydroelectric Project in East Malaysia. Situated on the island of Borneo, Bakun Dam is a 204 m high concrete face, rock filled dam on the Balui River in the Upper Rajang Basin in the rainforests of Sarawak. [...]

Every once in a while it behooves us to remember that the so-called engineering miracle known as the hydroelectric dam is rife with sustainability issues. Besides the obvious ecological disturbances that come from filling up the reservoir with water, there is a major long term problem with all dams known as aggradation. When a dam [...]

Scientists predicted that when the world’s largest hydropower project came online in 2003, it would be an environmental bane. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River has unfortunately lived up to expectations. For that reason China is embarking on a 10-year mitigation effort that sources say will cost $26.45 billion. The travails of the [...]

One million people depend on the seasonal filling and emptying of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap Lake. But newly built dams on the upper Mekong and its tributaries are expected to modulate the river’s flow. A large area of permanent inundation will swallow thousands of hectares of floodplain, disrupting the ecosystem and possibly devastating the fishery. Laotian [...]

THE EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP WAS SOLID, BUT IT DIDN’T LOOK EARTH-SHATTERING. My graduate students had built four matched cylinders, each 36 inches long and 3.5 inches in diameter. All four were attached to support structures and immersed in a flow tank in the Marine Renewable Energy Laboratory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.When the [...]

The Norwegian company Statkraft opens the world’s first facility for osmotic power generation. Statkraft says a full-scale commercial osmotic power plant could be ready by 2015. Energy from osmosis — Nordic Energy Solutions

A belief that ‘small’ hydropower systems are a source of clean energy with little or no environmental problems is driving the growing interest in mini, micro, and pico hydro systems that generate from less than 5 kilowatts up to 10 megawatts of energy.Hydropower appears to be the cleanest and most versatile of renewable energy sources. [...]