Melting Glaciers - looming threat to Hydro power in India

[Manu Sharma]

Hydro power projects not just contribute to climate change through methane emissions, now it appears that are will also be the first to pay for the effects of climate change...

"The rapidly retreating Himalayan glaciers [...] could spell disaster for hydro-electric projects set up on the rivers fed by the melting ice. An extensive study done by a team of scientists from the Space Administration Centre at ISRO, Ahmedabad, using remote sensing satellites, reveals that the melting is happening at a threatening pace. The study conducted on 466 glaciers in Chenab, Parbati and Baspa river basins shows a reduction in glacier area from 2077 sq km in 1962 to 1628 sq km at present."

The above quote is from the latest issue of WISE newsletter on green energy ( source PDF, 2.5 MB, page 13). The quoted ISRO study is from Current Science journal (issue number / month not mentioned).

That is a whopping 450 square Km of glaciers that have disappeared in the past 45 years! To put that in perspective, the amount of lost ice is 18 times the size of Shimla city, capital of Himachal Pradesh.
 
This would indeed spell disaster for India's power generation scenario in the coming 2-3 decades. The Himachal govt has elaborate plans to attract Rs.80,000 crore of private investment in Hydropower projects over the next ten years according to this report . These projects will be on Built-Own-Operate and Transfer basis. A fter 40 years, they are supposed to revert back to the state.

Unfortunately, if the glaciers retreat as expected, these hydro projects may not even exist after 40 years. The increased volume of water caused by melting is first expected to cause massive flooding and then cause serious decline in water supply.

- Manu
Green-India

[Manu Sharma]

[Manu Sharma]

[Manu Sharma]

[Manu Sharma]

[Manu Sharma]

[Manu Sharma]