Is water really a renewable source of energy?

I already explored this topic in a podcast on March 19 (for the link see notes).

Disappearing lakes and precipitation

This is how I became interested in the topic. How can we say water is renewable if we have lakes like the Aral Sea dry up? A lake that I learned at school was the fourth largest in the world. I had questioned the renewability of water as a source of energy on social media before and was shot down. At the time I didn’t bother looking into the definitions, I was just noticing how we (in Switzerland) were getting less snow in winter and were also experiencing hotter and drier summers. I used to be able to ski locally, but that ski lift was closed in 2003. The closure was not only due to the lack of snow, but it was a contributing factor. So, it just didn’t seem smart to bank on water being renewable anymore.

During a podcast [back to edit: the podcast no longer exists - it got deleted when Callin was sold] on water scarcity and other water-related issues, I started thinking about this topic again.

Hydrolectric power in Switzerland

Switzerland has the perfect topography to generate hydropower and there is a long history of it. In 2021 I went on a guided tour at a hydroelectric power plant close to the source of the river Aare (Grimsel region) and I found it very interesting. I live down river and have walked along some of the main rivers in Switzerland for many miles. There are a lot of hydroelectric power plants. Here’s just one example.

Kraftwerk Beznau (my picture)

Let’s look at some numbers from the Swiss government: there are 682 hydroelectric power stations in Switzerland and 220 dams which makes us the country with the highest density of dams in the world. According to the Department of Energy 62% of our electricity comes from hydropower and another 29% is nuclear power. Why do I add nuclear here? Well, last I checked our nuclear power plants were right on a river and used its water for cooling purposes. So, if my math is correct this means that 91% of our electricity production is reliant on water. And there doesn’t seem to be a plan B. How is this smart? How are we proud of most of our electricity coming from “renewable” water? And we’re not even talking about other issues – such as biodiversity loss and how green hydropower really is.

UN definition of renewable energy

Let’s look at some definitions. I picked the UN one:

Renewable energy is energy derived from natural sources that are replenished at a higher rate than they are consumed. Sunlight and wind, for example, are such sources that are constantly being replenished. Renewable energy sources are plentiful and all around us.

Okay, so far so good. They don’t mention water here specifically, but it sure is a natural source and it is replenished. We just have no influence over where it reappears once it evaporates. Now to hydropower in particular (same source):

Hydropower harnesses the energy of water moving from higher to lower elevations.” […] “Hydropower currently is the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector. It relies on generally stable rainfall patterns […].

The part in bold (my emphasis) is where I see a problem as we fast forward to the UN Water Conference in New York City (March 2023), and a report called Turning the Tide which states:

Our collective actions have pushed the global water cycle out of balance for the first time in human history, wreaking increasing damage on communities everywhere.

Interesting … so the renewability of the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector relies on stable rainfall patters and we have managed to screw up the global water cycle. That can’t be good!

When it comes to the movement of water being renewable – well yes, I’m on board with that. You can use the same water multiple times without wasting any. The problem starts when you run out of what is the basis of hydropower – water. So, whether hydropower can be considered renewable might be semantics to a certain extent, but water is needed either way.

Future of hydroelectric power in Switzerland

Here’s where they (our government) lose me as this is the Swiss strategy:

The federal government wants to promote the future use of hydropower to a greater extent through a variety of measures. In order to exploit the realizable potential, existing power plants are to be renovated and expanded while taking the related ecological requirements into account.

This seems to be the consensus not only on a federal but also on a state level. There was a media conference on March 23 (only in Swiss German, I’m afraid) that dealt with the current energy crisis and a potential re-opening of a gas power station pretty close to where I live. Now, to stick with the topic of this newsletter they also showed their plans for when our nuclear power plants are being decommissioned. What I found astonishing was that electricity production through hydropower is thought to remain stable up to 2050. That seems very optimistic not to say unrealistic. Have they not heard about dry winters and hot summers? I’m still waiting to hear what our plan B is if we are running low or out of water. I’m sure it will somehow involve spending a lot of money buying electricity from elsewhere - instead of planning ahead.

Drought monitoring

I did find out that there are people who are keeping an eye on water in Switzerland (I hadn’t heard of drought.ch before doing my podcast on this topic), in Europe and around the world. And since I trust scientists more than politicians, I am going to start paying more attention to what they are saying. It’s not looking great in Switzerland at the moment especially due to a lack of snow in the mountains. We do generally rely on melting snow to replenish our river systems.

Final thoughts

Renewable makes it sound like it’s an unlimited resource that can just be re-generated whenever and wherever we want. This might – to a certain extent – be true for wood as you can plant trees and choose where to plant them. And in the case of trees, everybody understands that it takes years for trees to (re)grow.

Now, I’m speaking from personal experience here and from what I see around me. In my podcast on the subject, I called it the Swiss arrogance of not looking at water as the valuable resource it is. It’s just always been there – especially where I live. We might have been told before to conserve water and public fountains were shut off and small things like that, but we haven’t really experienced the kind of droughts other regions have. This attitude is going to come back and bite us.

As I type this my train is passing a particularly nice stretch of the river Aare and it makes me smile.

I know I only covered using water to generate power. Of course, we also need it for basic survival, then again having power is nowadays also linked to survival – at least in the Western World. Let’s all pay more attention to how we use our resources. Even the so-called renewable ones are not there ad infinitum. Let’s start treating it as the valuable source of life that it is. We are all in this together.

Notes:

Podcast

[back to edit: the podcast no longer exists - it got deleted when Callin was sold].

https://www.callin.com/episode/ep-22-is-water-really-a-renewable-source-of-jIknWYymHb

Ski lift (German)

https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/aargau/aarau/schmiedrued-walde-der-einst-laengste-skilift-des-aargaus-kommt-ins-museum-ld.2381787

Definitions, numbers

• https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/wirtschaft/energie/energie---fakten-und-zahlen.html

• https://www.bfe.admin.ch/bfe/en/home/supply/renewable-energy/hydropower.html/

• https://www.britannica.com/science/water-cycle

• https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-renewable-energy

• https://unece.org/DAM/energy/se/pdfs/comm25/ECE_ENERGY_2016_4.pdf

• https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/Chapter-5-Hydropower-1.pdf

• Medienkonferenz Kanton Aargau (in Swiss German)

Drought monitoring

• https://www.drought.ch/Messungen/index_DE

• http://europeandroughtcentre.com/

• https://gdis-noaa.hub.arcgis.com/