Green and thirsty energy!? Yunnan's (SW-China) aggressive hydropower development and the Water-Energy-Environment Nexus.

• Applicant: Dr. Thomas Hennig
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: from 2014 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 267459381

The transformation of the energy sector and safeguarding a stable energy supply is one of the crucial challenges of today's global societies. Unlike Germany, hydropower development, in many countries, plays a pivotal role. In particular in Asia, hydropower is seen as the most important renewable energy and is being developed rapidly. Since the new millennium China has been developed as the world's largest generator and consumer of power as well as the largest driver in hydropower development. The geographical research on that topic focuses almost exclusively on individual and often controversial large dams. But 98.6% of China's 50,000 hydropower stations are small projects. Due to a different classification system small projects are defined up to an installed capacity of 50MW. While the multiple implications of large dams and also the environmental consequences of singular small hydropower projects are well studied, cumulative impacts of (small) hydropower cascades are still a significant research gap with important policy implications. This is particularly true with regard to (sub-)catchments and an analysis of multiple interactions (e.g. power consumption, ecology, etc.). Study region is the province of Yunnan which lies within two hotspots of global biodiversity. The province is also known for its high geo and ethnic diversity. Yunnan has been developing as one of the world's key regions for hydropower generation. The province, part of four international river basins, became an epitome of a new fast-paced hydropower development which primarily serves long distant electricity markets. Within Yunnan the transnational Irrawaddy catchment serves as case study area. It has one of the highest dam densities worldwide and almost the entire region is affected by small and large scale hydropower development. Parallel it is characterized by a fast-paced development of a large number of energy-intensive industries (silicon, aluminum, etc.). The overall goal of the project is an analysis of trade-offs between Yunnan's rapid hydropower development and selected aspects of the water-energy-environment nexus. The nexus approach is gaining popularity in science and politics, but has never been analyzed in relation to a comprehensive hydropower development. Therefore I want to make a contribution for a better understanding of the complex interactions. I focus on three sub-goals: (i) spatio-temporal analysis of the water-energy nexus based on the trade-offs between (hydro-)power generation, (hydro-)power exports and local/provincial power consumption (focus energy intensive industries); (ii) water-environment nexus: quantitative and qualitative analysis of cumulative biophysical and ecological implications, and (iii) to expand the currently best interactive web-based infographic of China's unique hydropower development and to develop a new infographic with more layers/information (in cooperation with Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: China
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Daming He