Scoping the Market for Fish-friendly Hydropower Technologies: Recent developments, future expectations

FIThydro Market Conditions Brief

Publication: Policy Brief
Citation: McDonald, Hugh and Gerardo Anzaldúa 2020: Scoping the market for fish-friendly hydropower technologies: recent developments, future expectations. FIThydro Market Conditions Brief.

Hydropower remains essential to achieve Europe's climate commitments. At the same time, the sector must innovate to decrease its negative impacts on Europe's rivers and freshwater fish. This FIThydro Brief, written by Ecologic Institute's Hugh McDonald and Gerardo Anzaldúa, assesses the current and future demand for fish-friendly hydropower in Europe. It concludes that EU and national policy and economic developments offer a chance to innovate and address rising social and environmental concerns about hydropower's negative impacts.

Key messages

Hydropower currently produces 36% of EU’s renewable electricity. The European Green Deal, which supports economic development and decarbonisation, ensures that hydropower will remain a relevant source in the energy mix.
However, increasing social concern about hydropower’s negative environmental impacts on free-flowing rivers, river ecosystems and natural fish populations, is translating into social resistance, shortened hydropower concessions, and other legal restrictions.
Researchers and developers are making progress on innovative solutions, methods, tools and devices to reduce the negative impacts of hydropower on fish.
Green finance and historically low interest rates create favourable conditions for hydropower investment in Europe, especially new technology uptake and environmentally friendly upgrades to existing plants.
The current political conditions combined with increasing social awareness and demands create a favourable landscape for the uptake of innovative fish-friendly technologies – but these will have to be validated, easy to use, affordable and scalable.

Fish Friendly Innovative Technologies for Hydropower (FIThydro)

The FIThydro project was a four year Horizon2020 research and innovation action (2016-2020). It focussed on investigating and developing cost-effective environmental solutions and strategies to avoid individual fish damage and to support the development of self-sustainable fish populations in Europe's rivers. FIThydro brought together 26 partners from 10 countries, involving several of the leading companies in the renewable and hydropower energy sector in Europe, as well as 13 test cases in four European regions (Scandinavia, France/Belgium, the Alps and the Iberian Peninsula).

The FIThydro Market Conditions Brief represents one of the final outputs of the project.

Public Acceptance of Hydropower

Year 2022

Publication:Book Section

red cover of the Springer book "Novel Developments for Sustainable Hydropower"

Hydropower is at the cross-road of different policies on renewable energy, climate change, water and nature. Knowledge of current policies and regulations at different levels is crucial for understanding the framework conditions for more sustainable hydropower. In this chapter, Ecologic Institute's Dr. Eleftheria Kampa examines the role of policy in planning and implementing mitigation actions for European hydropower. The chapter is available for download.

Policy Framework for Hydropower Mitigation

Year 2022

Publication:Book

This open access book presents (selected) new and innovative developments for sustainable and fish-friendly hydropower. It offers unique insights into the challenges, practices and policies of hydropower developments across 8 European countries, providing examples from on-site studies and European-wide analyses. The case studies throughout the book are practical "real-world" examples, which are intended to serve as inspiration for anyone who would like to know more about how solutions for more sustainable hydropower production can be designed and implemented. The book was co-edited by Ecologic Institute's Dr. Eleftheria Kampa. Authors of the Ecologic Institute contributed to the chapters on "Policy Framework for Hydropower Mitigation" and "Public Acceptance of Hydropower."

Novel Developments for Sustainable Hydropower

Year 2022

Event:Conference

The final online conference of the FIThydro project brought together over 280 participants from across the globe to explore the latest research developments on the topic of sustainable and fish friendly hydropower showcasing the final project’s results in addition to presentations by experts from outside the project on related topics. The online conference was hosted by Ecologic Institute and the Technical University of Munich.

International Conference on Fishfriendly Hydropower

17 - 18 March 2021
online

News

In the Europe-wide FIThydro project, Ecologic Institute worked with research and industry partners to study existing hydroelectric power plants. Together the project partners developed new assessment methods and technologies such as a fish population hazard index, simulations for fish migration and an open-access decision support tool for hydropower planning. The goal: making hydropower more fish-friendly and environmentally sustainable. All project results are made available online.

Towards More Fish-friendly Hydropower Production

EU project "FIThydro" studies environmental impacts of hydroelectric power plants

6 November 2020

Publication:Policy Brief

The FIThydro Policy Brief presents summaries of selected key outputs from the H2020 FIThydro project, which are relevant for policy makers, managers and operators involved in the commissioning and operation of hydropower plants.

Fish-friendly Innovative Technologies for Hydropower

Key outputs from the FIThydro project

Year 2020

Publication:Article

In the European Union, hydropower represents an important component of a renewable energy transition, in part due to its existing infrastructure. A large share of future European hydropower projects will be run-of-the-river schemes. To understand the potential for RoR hydropower development and modernization of the technology as an opportunity for sustainable decentralization, this report uses the Q-methodology to compare public values about RoR hydropower in German, Portuguese and Swedish case studies.

The Public's Perception of Run-of-the-river Hydropower across Europe

Year 2020

Event:Workshop

The European Stakeholder Workshop on Fish-friendly Hydropower will be held on 28 and 29 January 2020 in Brussels (Belgium). This event will serve as a platform for consultation and exchange between FIThydro scientists, policy-makers and technical experts working on the assessment of impacts from hydropower plants and the planning of mitigation measures.

FIThydro – European Stakeholder Workshop

28 - 29 January 2020
Brussels, Belgium

Publication:Article

Hydropower now accounts for 18% of electricity generated across Europe and 70% of renewable energy. Most of Europe's hydropower plants have been in operation for several decades. They are therefore about to be renovated, modernized and expanded. Only recently has the emphasis been placed on the protection of fish. European countries must adhere to the Water Framework Directive, which calls for environmentally friendly, socially acceptable and economically viable hydropower. The FIThydro project deals with this topic and wrote an article. Eleftheria Kampa from Ecologic Institute contributed to this article. It is available for download.

Le projet FIThydro: Une initiative européenne pour une hydroélectricité durable et respectueuse des poissons

Year 2018

Language: English
Authorship: Hugh McDonald

Gerardo Anzaldúa
Credits: Contributors: Terese Venus (TUM), Lea Berg, (TUM), Eleftheria Kampa (Ecologic Institute)
Funding: European Commission, Directorate-General Research & Innovation (DG Research & Innovation), International
Year: 2020
Dimension: 10 pp.
Project: Fish Friendly Innovative Technologies for Hydropower (FIThydro)
Project ID: 2806
Table of contents: Click to show full table of contents

Key Messages
Introduction
Amidst high economic uncertainty, green growth is set to keep hydropower strong
Favourable investment conditions are there for sustainable power generation
Hydropower's ambiguous environmental record raises concerns
A wavering social license for hydropower expansion?
More stringent legal requirements to mitigate negative hydropower impacts are expected
Carefully oriented technological innovations can enable low-impact hydropower
Creating conditions for widespread uptake of fish-friendly hydropower solutions
Conclusions
References
Keywords: Biodiversity

Energy

Water

hydropower, fish populations, financing, stakeholders, participatory process, acceptance, decision support system, mitigation measures

Scandinavia, France, Belgium, Alps, Iberian Peninsula, Europe

Further Links

PublicationPolicy BriefFish-friendly Innovative Technologies for Hydropower

Hydropower is an important source of renewable and stable energy production. However, hydroelectric power generation also affects aquatic ecosystems, in particular fish fauna and hydro-morphology. There is therefore a need to find alternative methods and tools for... Read more

Kampa, E., Berg, L. (edit.), 2020: Fish-friendly Innovative Technologies for Hydropower. Key outputs from the FIThydro project. Policy Brief.

PublicationArticleThe Public's Perception of Run-of-the-river Hydropower across Europe

Venus, T., Hinzmann, M., Bakken, T., Gerdes, H., Godinho, F., Hansen, B., Pinheiro, A. and Sauer, J., 2020: The public's perception of run-of-the-river hydropower across Europe. Energy Policy, 140, p.111422.

FIThydro project website