An Assessment of Hydropower Environmental Mitigation Costs
This report provides an assessment of environmental mitigation costs for hydropower projects across the United States (U.S.) based on data extracted from Environmental Assessments (EA) submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). EAs are required by the Federal Power Act (FPA) for hydropower license and relicense applications to weigh the “power” and “non-power” (i.e. environmental) benefits of their development and operation. For this analysis, we collected data from 184 EA documents reviewed by FERC between 1996 and 2018, and created a database of environmental protection, mitigation, and enhancement (PM&E) measures with their associated economic information. The data cover two hydropower relicense categories—103 Relicensed Conventional Hydropower Dams (RCHD) and 6 Relicensed Pumped Storage Hydropower (RPSH) projects—and three new development categories—57 hydropower retrofits at Non-Powered Dams (NPD), 11 New Stream-Reach Development (NSD) projects and 6 Pumped Storage Hydropower (NPSH) projects. For the analysis, we classify the PM&E measures into 11 Tier 1 categories. We evaluated capital and operations & maintenance (O&M) costs of PM&E measures on a $$\$$$$/kW basis by project type and mitigation category, as well as their share in the total project levelized cost of energy (LCOE).
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Water Power Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 1559644
- Report Number(s):
- ORNL/TM-2019/1245
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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