Don’t dams produce cheap electricity?
Economically speaking, hydroelectricity is cheap to produce – once the dams are built. The problem is the huge costs of building dams and the long time it takes to build them. Actual costs for hydropower dams are almost always far higher than estimated; in a number of cases, the actual cost was more than double the estimated cost. The Itaipu Dam in South America cost $20 billion and took 18 years to build. This was 488% higher than originally estimated. Dams often produce less power than promised – and as climate change is expected to change river hydrology in many parts of the globe, power output from dams could become even more unreliable. Dam promoters do not take into account the risk of climate change impacting their projects, which adds to the already optimistic cost-benefit estimates that characterize so many dam projects. In addition, the transmission lines needed to distribute the power generated by the dam are often inefficient and expensive. Too often in many poor countries
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- Surely we need dams to produce cheap electricity?
