Solutions to Mitigate Hydropower Plant Issues

It is undeniable that hydropower will be a key player among the list of renewable energy
available locally and has huge potential to be marketed as a green energy in Malaysia.
Geographically, Malaysia has the ideal criteria for hydropower to flourish in the energy market
due to the existing exposure to mass amount of water. However, a heavy dependency of this
energy will cause several issues to the country. This section will be talking about the solutions
to mitigate the impact of a hydropower plant.

Environmental Issues

To fully utilize the energy production of a hydropower plant, the plant design will have
serious consequences to several factor mentioned earlier such as the change of river flow,
displacement of animal habitat and also the surrounding marine life condition. For terrestrial
habitats, the hydropower plant’s locale should consider a higher ground to prevent further
flooding or use the dam during rainy seasons for maximum water storage. Plus, the water from
the dam can renewed daily so it won’t lay stagnant which will give the surrounding upstream
marine life to spawn and migrate. The plant design can also include a properly design fish
ladder to create a passage for the fish to migrate. Furthermore, environment-governing bodies
of Malaysia such as the Department of Environment, Ministry of Energy, Green Technology
and Water or the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment should come up with a strict
policy and guideline for the plant design and energy production so that the greenhouse emission
can be controlled and surrounding environment can be preserved. There should also be a
uniform taxation to offset the costs of social damages caused by greenhouse gasses. Such a tax
can influence the irresponsible decision to propagate hydropower dams thoroughly.

Economic & Social Issues

Despite the beneficial criteria hydropower can provide, construction and annual
maintenance of the power require a substantial amount of cost to maintain the operation hence
improper management and lack of government support will jeopardize its economic credibility.
However, instead of channelling all the resources towards a hydropower which is costly, one
could try to compromise with a miniature scale hydropower plant especially for the areas
nearby the river which can potential solve the opportunity cost while allocating other resources
to other energy alternative like the government ‘s Five Fuel Policy of 2011. Moreover, the
locale of the hydropower plant must consider the surrounding populace as a hydropower plant
will affect the aborigine with heavy dependence on fishing and agriculture. So in order to
prevent any social ill feeling, parties with hydropower project should prepare sufficient
compensation and job opportunity if the case calls for it or relocate to another locale which
won’t interfere with the livelihood of these people.

References

https://jisibhlphysics.wikispaces.com/Problems+with+hydroelectricity+and+their+solutions

http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sdissues/energy/op/hydro_collier.pdf

https://www.usbr.gov/power/edu/pamphlet.pdf

http://www.files.ethz.ch/cepe/Top10/Commerford.pdf

http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/200761/200761.pdf

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/16/1/012050/pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316428148_Energy_Economic_and_Environmental
_Impact_of_Hydropower_in_Malaysia

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360128512000056

https://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-advances-in-carbon-capture-and-
storage/membrane-separation-technology-in-carbon-capture

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es702607w?src=recsys

http://www.nre.gov.my/sites/TNC-BUR/Documents/BUR_Malaysia_Final.pdf