Fit-for-purpose licensing and permitting for sustainable hydropower

Hydropower remains the world’s largest source of renewable electricity and a critical provider of flexibility, resilience and storage as wind and solar expand. Yet the Outlook is clear: the sector will not scale at the pace required without faster permitting, stronger policy design and approvals of processes that are fit for purpose. In 2024, global hydropower capacity additions reached 24.6GW, including 8.4GW of pumped storage, while the global pipeline now totals roughly 1,075GW. Nonetheless, barriers to permitting and funding, alongside weak project progression through approvals, continue to threaten delivery.

This challenge is not unique to hydropower: the IEA and European Commission both identify fragmented administration, weak agency co-ordination, insufficient staffing, lack of clear deadlines, limited digitalisation, and poor community engagement as central causes of delay across renewable energy permitting.

This session will examine how to make hydropower licensing and permitting faster, more predictable and more credible without weakening environmental and social safeguards. The discussion will take a holistic view of reform: not just streamlining paperwork, but improving decision quality, sequencing, transparency, stakeholder trust and post-approval accountability.

Contemporary examples already point to the way forward. In the EU, the revised Renewable Energy Directive introduced simplified permit-granting rules to accelerate renewable deployment. In Sweden, the national hydropower relicensing framework is designed to provide modern environmental conditions while preserving an efficient national supply of hydropower. Meanwhile, World Bank analysis shows that timely environmental and social permitting, early engagement and social licence to operate are directly linked to project bankability, investment readiness and long-term sustainability.

The core message is simple: only sustainable hydropower should be accelerated, guided by international good practice and frameworks such as the Hydropower Sustainability Standard.

Session objectives

• Identify the main licensing and permitting bottlenecks delaying sustainable hydropower and PSH projects across different markets.
• Examine practical reform options, including single-window processes, statutory timelines, stronger regulator capacity, digitalisation and better alignment between spatial planning, grid planning and environmental review.
• Show how early stakeholder engagement, benefit-sharing and stronger social legitimacy can reduce conflict and improve delivery outcomes.