Dharamshala, 29th June: Despite environmental harm expectations, China started to operate on Monday the world’s second-largest hydropower station, a milestone in Beijing’s ambitions to carbon neutrality. According to state media, Monday morning the Baihetan Hydroelectric Power Station in South Western China ranks second in the world in electricity generation to the country’s Three Gorges Dam. According to CCTV, Baihetan has been created for 16,000 megawatts with a full-time installed capacity, meaning that it is able to generate enough electricity each day to meet 500,000 people’s power requirements throughout a complete year.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS:
However, environmental groups have warned for years that dam building affects the habitats of unique animals and plants, including Yangtze Finless Porpoise, which has been critically threatened. Dam construction on the river has altered the composition of water-sediment, generating ‘a large-scale risk to hydro physics and human health that affects downstream the Yangtze Basins,’ researchers have written this month in a report in the Elsevier journal Science of the Environment. Hundreds of thousands of local residents were also displacing and causing anxiety in neighboring countries with large engineering projects.
China has been identified by analysts as a threat to Tibetan cultural heritage as China’s ambition to exceed the Three Gorges Dam in Tibet’s Medog County and as an effective means by which Pekin may successfully manage large parts of India’s water supplies. The impact of the dams on China’s Mekong area has also generated fears that a waterway that supplies 60 million people downstream to the Vietnamese Delta might be affected by irreversible damage.
Image source: Yahoo