NEWS: Scientists have cast damaging doubts over the green credentials of hydroelectric power.
Philip Fearnside, of the National Institute for Research in the Amazon, told Nature magazine that in the first 10 years of a typical hydroelectric power station’s life it will produce four times more carbon than a comparable fossil-fuel plant would emit.
And the Observer reports that scientists will tell a meeting of the United Nations science body Unesco that building dams to produce power causes harmful levels of methane to be released.
This is because the dams trap organic material which rots in reservoirs, releasing carbon dioxide as well as the more harmful methane.
Other scientists say that after a few years hydroelectric plants produce relatively few greenhouse gas emissions.
Picture: La Tasajera hydroelectric plant in Barbosa, Colombia. From: www.sxc.hu
