(Interfax, Nov 28, 2006) China is unlikely to turn its back on the massive and largely unexploited hydropower potential despite a number of recent controversies and setbacks, an expert with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Tuesday.

Gao Hu, an associate professor with the NDRC's Renewable Energy Development Center, said at the Global Hydropower Summit in Beijing that China's resource shortages, coupled with its skyrocketing energy demand, mean that it must continue to build large and disruptive dams and reservoirs on the country's biggest rivers.

Earlier in the year, the government appeared to reject a proposal to line the Nu River in Yunnan Province with thirteen hydropower plants, with the Minister of Water Resources, Wang Shucheng, saying that the plan was unsustainable and unscientific.

An increasing volume of stories about the negative impact of large-scale hydropower has also been appearing in the state-owned press, suggesting a difference in approach, but the launch of more big plants is inevitable. 

"China's renewable energy targets will require a big wave of construction in the next fifteen years," Gao said.  "The Nu River is a very sensitive question. Small hydropower plants also face similar problems of overdevelopment, environmental damage and migration. We need to learn from international experience to develop regulations, but the central government will continue to give support to big hydropower."

China is committed to boosting renewable energy to 10 percent by 2010 and 16 percent by 2020, a task made considerably easier by the inclusion of large-scale hydropower stations. Ninety percent of the country's total renewable energy is expected to be derived from hydropower, according to NDRC figures.

Some experts say that plants like the Three Gorges and other massive facilities in the southwest cause too much damage to precarious ecosystems to be regarded as green alternative energy, but China continues to press ahead, believing that harnessing its rivers is far more sustainable than building new coal-fired plants.

Nevertheless, the plans to build more huge facilities - like the Xiangjiaba on the Jinsha River, which launched construction over the weekend - remain subject to dispute.

Liu Dong, the deputy country manager of the World Bank's International Finance Corp., said that large hydropower is far too controversial to receive IFC financial support, and that the organization would stick with smaller plants like the one it has been involved with on the Baishui River in Yunnan Province.

Source:Interfax