Hydro Law and the Future of Hydroelectric Power Generation in the United States
Bibliographic record
Abstract
I. SETTING THE STAGE: HYDRO TRIUMPHS BUT ITS MARKET SHARE STEADILY DECLINES 1727A. The Pros 1734B. The Cons 17351. Fish Loss 17362. Land Loss and Scenic Impairment 17373. Pollution and Aquatic Ecosystem Modification 17374. Climate Change 17385. Increased Competition for Water 17426. Aging Infrastructure 1743II. THE ENVIRONMENTAL-RECREATIONAL-TRIBAL NETWORK OF CONSTRAINTS 1744A. Mitigation of Lost Fish Runs Pre -???? and ESA 1745?. ???? and ESA Change the Game 1749C. Parity for Fish and White Water Rafters in FERC Licensing 1752III . FROM WORKING RIVERS TO RIVERS THAT WORK 1755IV. HYDRO'S FUTURE 1758A. Is the Capacity There? 1759B. The Small-Scale Upgrade Scenario 1760C. Big Hydro 17631. Private Financing of Project Upgrades 17632. Integrating Hydro Production with the Environmental Protection Network 1764V. CONCLUSION 1766Hydroelectric energy (hydro) is the oldest major source of noncarbon, renewable energy in the United States. For three reasons, increased hydro generation should be a major element of any national climate change and energy-security policy designed to promote the greater use of renewables to help the country transition to the production of sustainable, i.e., noncarbon-based, energy. First, hydro is relatively clean because it does not cause air pollution or substantial greenhouse gas emissions.1 Second, hydro is relatively reliable.2 Third, hydro can help wean the United States from its dependence on imported and often politically unstable hydrocarbon sources of energy,3 because the resource is widely available, and substantial undeveloped capacity exists.4 In addition, many nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and Canada are investing heavily in new hydro facilities.5 The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that worldwide hydro -generating capacity will grow at a rate of 2% from 2008 to 2035.6 However, in the United States, hydro is treated as the stepchild of renewable energy law and policy. Given hydro's benefits, it is logical to ask: is the United States as out of step with world energy policy as it is with climate change policy? The current expert consensus answer is no: increased hydro generation will not be a major component of any carbon or noncarbon U.S. energy future. Hydro currently supplies 42% of the 7% of domestic energy production generated by renewable resources.7 Most authoritative energy scenarios suggest that, for the foreseeable future, hydro's share will be flat or experience only modest increases.8The EIA estimates that the United States' hydro-generating capacity is projected to grow at a rate of only 0.1% per year. Initially, this conclusion is paradoxical because the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the United States has tapped only 16% of its potential hydro production.9 The conventional answer to this paradox is that hydro is nonetheless a developed technology, has high environmental costs compared to wind and solar energy, and is both a climate change adaptation option and an energy source stressed by climate change. Therefore, the prevailing consensus is that there is no need to provide substantial incentives for its expansion, like those available for wind, solar, biomass, and other alternative renewables.10 To borrow from equilibrium ecology, hydro has reached its climax stage.11 This assumption is reflected in state renewable portfolio standards legislation and federal tax incentives,12 which exclude conventional hydro from definitions of renewable energy. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".