Map of Xingu River (pink) and the site of Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam (arrow). (Kmusser/Wikimedia Commons)
In the Amazon you don’t need to burn wood for a forest to contribute to energy production.
Once Upon a Time…
People thought the worth of a forest was determined by the value of its timber. We now know that leads to a gross undervaluation. Forests, like most ecosystems, provide a host of services whose value can far exceed the simple worth of the trees. Services like clean water and air, soil retention, stormwater control, habitat, and even increasing groundwater supply. Cut down a forest and you need to replace all the things the forest provides, and that can be quite expensive.
New York’s Water Story
A case in point – the riparian forests in upstate New York provide clean drinking water to the residents of the Big Apple. In the early 1990s the U.S. EPA mandated that the city build a filtration plant at a cost of ~$7 billion. But New York came up with a better plan at a savings of about $6 billion: rehabilitate the riparian forests in the Catskills where the water comes from and allow the trees, at a greatly reduced cost, to provide the needed filtration. The system works so well that New York City is one of the few major metropolitan areas in the U.S. that gets away with minimal filtering for its drinking water.
Is There an Energy Story?
Ok, forests providing clean water – that’s easy to understand. But what about energy? One way to generate energy from a forest is to cut it down and burn the wood – but that destroys most of the other services as well.
Is there a way to use forests to enhance energy production without burning them? Yes, say Claudia Stickler of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute and co-authors in a paper published May 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Interestingly like the New York story this one involves water as well.
Hydropower Reigns Supreme in Brazil
You’ve heard of king coal? Well, in Brazil, hydropower is king. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a whopping 79 percent of Brazil’s electricity came from hydropower in 2010. (In the U.S. that drops to about 7 percent.)
But Brazil wants even more hydropower, which brings us to the next chapter in our story.
Way Down Upon the Xingu River
You can find the Xingu River on a map in the northeastern corner of Brazil. It runs south to north for about 1,200 miles and drains into the Amazon River. (See related pictures: “A River People Awaits an Amazon Dam.”)
Brazil has big plans for the Xingu River — more specifically, on the Xingu about 100 miles south of where it meets up with the Amazon. That is the construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, slated to be the third largest hydropower facility in the world behind China’s Three Gorges Dam and the Itaipu Dam operated jointly by Brazil and Paraguay. When completed, the Belo Monte Dam will have the capacity to produce up to 11 million kilowatts.
Environmentalists Cheer… and Hiss
If you’re a fan of the environment, all that hydropower can seem like a good thing – energy without burning fossil fuels and so no air pollution, no greenhouse gas emissions. Right? Not quite.
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