ANDRITZ annual report 2012 - ANDRITZ Vertical volute pumps

28
Protocol for
sustainability
Jörg Hartmann is an expert in hydroelectric
power. He works for the
German KfW Entwicklungsbank,
the World Wildlife Fund (WWF),
and is also chairman of the
governance committee of the
Hydropower Sustainability
Assessment Council, an international
body that promotes
sustainability in the construction
of hydropower plants.
In his essay, he describes
the importance of hydropower
and the challenges
that the industry is facing.
Hydropower was the first and will
remain the largest and most efficient
source of renewable energy
for many years. It is a key contributor
to a climate-friendly future.
Many hydropower projects fulfill
additional needs, such as energy
storage, water supply and irrigation, and bring sustainable
development also to remote regions. Up to now,
only about 30% of the global technical hydropower
potential have been developed. The remaining 70% are
mostly located in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where
power demand will grow strongly in the future in order
to accommodate the economic and social development
of these regions.
But as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
noted last year, “environmental and social concerns
represent perhaps the largest challenges
to continued deployment [of hydropower]
if not carefully managed.”
Careful management seems difficult to achieve. The
conflicts between developers of hydropower projects
on the one hand, and environmental and human rights
activists on the other hand, continue to play out.
Recent protests in countries like Brazil, India, Laos,
and Malaysia were a result of the inundation of valuable
ecosystems and agricultural land, the change of rivers
with rich fisheries, and social insecurity among remote,
often indigenous communities.