The Role of the State in Large-Scale Hydropower Development
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Conclusion. Shaping the Debate on Hydropower and Sustainable Energy in South America
This thesis presented the cases of three large hydropower projects that show the ways in which the governments of Ecuador, Perú, and Chile currently encounter and resolve the energy trilemma. These states face a great challenge: to improve livelihoods for every citizen, to find and implement energy technology solutions to climate change and environmental degradation, and to ensure the security of power supplies. We can expect large hydropower to play important role in these countries’ future electricity portfolios, especially as they seek to satisfy baseload energy requirements. However, given opposition from civil society organizations, local communities, and subnational governments, the state in each country has no choice but to reconsider the ways in which it decides why, how, and for whom it develops its energy generation capacity. The three hydropower megaprojects discussed above—Ecuador’s Coca-Codo-Sinclair, Perú’s Inambari, and Chile’s HidroAysén—have each emerged as an emblematic answer to the trilemma. However, these projects are immersed in constant social and environmental unrest. Relying on evidence from Ecuador’s case, and using information from Perú and Chile, this thesis argues that these conflicts occur in the context of three main regional trends. First, large hydropower projects are insufficiently evaluated against a large portfolio of energy generation options. Rather, in a political and economy history that can be traced to the early 1970s, this type of projects experience a number of key design iterations in order to meet ever-changing goals with respect to flood areas, maximum installed capacity, and powerproduction capacity, needed to meet not just reliability and security goals (e.g., Ecuador’s 12% power reserve margins) but also the return on investment for project sponsors (e.g. HA, in light of the projected expenses associated with the transmission portion of the project). In
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