Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Solar-power replacement as a solution for hydropower foregone in US dam removals

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 872–878 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

There is a growing dam removal movement in the United States, driven in part by environmental, safety and cost considerations. These include electricity-producing hydro-dams, many of which are ageing and will require substantial maintenance or removal over the coming decades. However, hydropower has been and remains an important source of energy for the development of the United States, presently generating about 6% of the nation’s electricity while providing essential grid services. As a potential solution to the conflict between these imperatives, industrial-scale photovoltaics (PVs) could be used for replacement of the energy foregone from hydro-dam removals either by installing the PV infrastructure in the area formerly inundated by the dam reservoir or through offsite replacement. Presently, the total PV generation in the conterminous United States is 35,919 GWh yr−1, or approximately 13% of hydropower generation. On the basis of actual hydropower generation in the conterminous United States in 2016 (that is, 274,868 GWh yr−1), we estimated that 529,885 ha of PVs would be needed to replace the generation of all 2,603 hydro-dams—an area approximately equal to the land size of Delaware. PVs could replace the total annual energy produced from these dams while requiring only 13% of their existing reservoir area. If all the hydro-dams in the United States were removed and only 50% of the emergent land was used for PVs, 945,062 GWh yr−1 power could be generated, which is 3.44 times the current hydropower generation. These analyses are theoretical and do not consider costs, which would be highly site specific. Replacement by PVs without energy storage could not replicate the dispatchability and grid services provisions of existing hydropower facilities; however, improving battery storage capabilities may ameliorate this shortcoming. We suggest that PVs could replace much of the annual electricity output of hydro-dams in the United States while using substantially less land area and providing considerable environmental and ecological benefits.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Aspects of hydroelectric and PV generation.

base maps from US Census Bureau

Fig. 2: Relationship between existing hydropower and PV potential.

base map from US Census Bureau

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

The code associated with this paper is available from the corresponding author upon request.

References

  1. National Inventory of Dams (US Army Corps of Engineers, accessed 22 September 2017); http://nid.usace.army.mil/cm_apex/f?p=838:12

  2. Monthly Energy Review (US Energy Information Administration, 2018).

  3. Bednarek, A. T. Undamming rivers: a review of the ecological impacts of dam removal. Environ. Manage. 27, 803–814 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. McCartney, M. Living with dams: managing the environmental impacts. Water Policy 11, 121–139 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Freeman, M. C., Pringle, C. M., Greathouse, E. A. & Freeman, B. J. Ecosystem-level consequences of migratory faunal depletion caused by dams. Am. Fish. Soc. Symp. 35, 255–266 (2003).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Limburg, K. & Waldman, J. R. Dramatic declines in North Atlantic diadromous fishes. Bioscience 59, 955–965 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Brown, J. J. et al. Fish and hydropower on the U.S. Atlantic Coast: failed fisheries policies from half-way technologies. Conserv. Lett. 6, 280–286 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Dias, M. S. et al. Anthropogenic stressors and riverine fish extinctions. Ecol. Indic. 79, 37–46 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Langland, M. J. Sediment Transport and Capacity Change in Three Reservoirs, Lower Susquehanna River Basin, Pennsylvania and Maryland, 1900–2012 Open-File Report 2014–1235 (US Geological Survey, 2015).

  10. Maheu, A., St-Hilaire, A., Caissie, D. & El-Jabi, N. Understanding the thermal regime of rivers influenced by small and medium size dams in eastern Canada. River Res. Appl. 32, 2032–2044 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Deemer, B. R. et al. Greenhouse gas emissions from reservoir water surfaces: a new global synthesis. Bioscience 66, 949–964 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. 2017 Infrastructure Report Card: Dams (American Society of Civil Engineers, accessed 5 October 2017); https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/dams/

  13. Ho, M. et al. The future role of dams in the United States of America. Water Resour. Res. 53, 1–17 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Magilligan, F. J. et al. River restoration by dam removal: Enhancing connectivity at watershed scales. Elem. Sci. Anth. 4, 1–14 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Foley, M. M. et al. Dam removal: listening in. Water Resour. Res. 53, 5229–5246 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Lovett, R. A. Rivers on the run. Nature 511, 521–523 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. McClenachan, L., Lovell, S. & Keaveney, C. Social benefits of restoring historical ecosystems and fisheries: alewives in Maine. Ecol. Soc. 20, 31 (2015).

  18. O’Connor, J. E., Duda, J. J. & Grant, G. E. 1000 dams down and counting. Science 348, 496–497 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Quantifying the Value of Hydropower in the Electric Grid: Final Report (Electric Power Research Institute, 2013).

  20. Hydropower Vision: A New Chapter for America’s 1st Renewable Electricity Source (US Department of Energy, 2016); https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/02/f49/Hydropower-Vision-021518.pdf

  21. Waldman, J. Undamming rivers: a chance for new clean energy source. Yale Environment 360 https://e360.yale.edu/features/undamming_rivers_a_chance_for_new_clean_energy_source (2015).

  22. Macknick, J., Lee, C., Mosey, G., & Melius, J. Solar Development on Contaminated and Disturbed Lands Report No. TP-6A20-58485 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2013).

  23. Re-Powering America’s Land (Environmental Protection Agency, 2012).

  24. Andorka, F. Tallahassee to move from hydro to solar. PV Magazine https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2017/07/26/tallahassee-to-move-from-hydro-to-solar/ (2017).

  25. Hernandez, R. R., Hoffacker, M. K. & Field, C. B. Efficient use of land to meet sustainable energy needs. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 353–358 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Walston, L. et al. Examining the potential for agricultural benefits from pollinator habitat at solar facilities in the United States. Environ. Sci. Technol. 13, 7566–7576 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Hernandez, R. R., Hoffacker, M. K., Murphy-Mariscal, M. L., Wu, G. C. & Allen, M. F. Solar energy development impacts on land cover change and protected areas. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 13579–13584 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Turney, D. & Fthenakis, V. Environmental impacts from the installation and operation of large-scale solar power plants. Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev. 15, 3261–3270 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Denholm, P, Eichman, J. & Margolis, R. Evaluating the Technical and Economic Performance of PV Plus Storage Power Plants Report No. TP-6A20-68737 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2017).

  30. Denholm, P. & Trieu, M. Timescales of energy storage needed for reducing renewable energy curtailment. Renew. Energ. 130, 388–399 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. System Advisor Model (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 15 September 2017); https://sam.nrel.gov/

  32. Ong, S., Campbell, C., Denholm, P., Margolis, R. & Heath, G. Land Use Requirement of Solar Power Plants in the United States Report No. TP-6A20-56290 (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2013).

  33. Johnson, M. M., Kao, S.-C. Samu, N. M. & Uria-Martinez, R. Existing Hydropower Assets. HydroSource (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2019).

  34. American Fact Finder (US Census Bureau, 2010); https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_00_SF1_GCTPH1.US01PR&prodType=table

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the JPB Foundation and the City University of New York for funding and A. Cak and C. Vörösmarty for facility support and discussions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department, Queens College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    John Waldman & Shailesh Sharma

  2. Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    John Waldman & Shailesh Sharma

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, City College of New York, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Shahab Afshari & Balázs Fekete

  4. Advanced Science Research Center, Environmental Sciences Initiative, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Shahab Afshari & Balázs Fekete

Authors
  1. John Waldman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shailesh Sharma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Shahab Afshari
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Balázs Fekete
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

J.W. took the lead in conceiving and conducting the analysis and in writing the paper. S.S., S.A. and B.F. helped plan the analysis, contributed to the interpretation of the results and helped write the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Waldman.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Waldman, J., Sharma, S., Afshari, S. et al. Solar-power replacement as a solution for hydropower foregone in US dam removals. Nat Sustain 2, 872–878 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0362-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0362-7

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing