Hydro Power

This is something that any country can do, and with local resources, creating local jobs.

The US has 80,000 dams of which 2,400 produce electricity. Yes, they are the biggest, tallest dams in the US. But that leaves 77,600 dams that do not produce. Yes, yes I know some people want to remove all dams. 

Those 77,600 dams are not all created equal, but the ones that are large enough could provide 60 Gigawatts in Capacity. The same energy as 7,500,000 acres of solar based on the US average capacity factor for solar. 

These dams exist, they are doing useful flood control activities in many cases, something that will become far more important, if storms increase in intensity. 

If the governments were focused on it, a program like what the Department of Energy has in the Loan Program Office would focus on getting these local jobs and clean energy production loans. Those loans could also provide funds to improve these dams. 

Some of these dams are in series on the same river, offering the ability to not only produce electricity, but offer pumped storage. 

The ISOs will be hard pressed to find ancillary services in 20 years, powering these dams would offer more flexibility. 

Let’s not start a program to build more dams, rather let’s start a program to make dams more useful and safer.