Why Hydro Energy Storage Is Needed Despite Its Shortcomings

Depending on who you ask, pumped hydro energy storage is either the future of the clean energy industry and the key to decarbonizing the global economy, or it’s an ecological disaster that needs to be stopped. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between – but friends and enemies of pumped hydro tend to espouse either one narrative or the other with inadequate attention to the nuanced trade-offs and potential synergies that pumped hydro storage presents to the renewable energy industry. The issue is this: building dams is good for clean energy storage, which is good for the environment; but on the other hand, the dams themselves tend to be extremely bad for the environment and the surrounding communities. We’re talking about massive dams that flood whole valleys, irreversibly changing the ecological balance of the area and often displacing humans as well as…

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