Hydropower quest level 1: navigating early stages

This is the first in a highly interactive, two-part session.

You are the project lead for a new hydropower project. The site is promising with great hydrologic features, but the investors are watching, and the clock is ticking. Your choices will determine whether the project flows smoothly—or runs aground.

Hydropower has a critical role to play in delivering energy security, stability and flexibility. But around the world, projects continue to face a range of obstacles that slow or stall development. From policy uncertainty and permitting delays to financing challenges, social acceptance, supply-chain constraints and competing land-use priorities, the barriers are often multi-layered and interconnected.

In this interactive first session, audience participants will help guide and vote our project to achieve early-stage approvals, through such issues as community engagement, environmental studies, and securing permits. Speakers will map the key challenges facing hydropower deployment today and how they have responded.  

Through live polling, audience input and expert reflections, the session will build a shared understanding of the most pressing obstacles and how these can be mitigated to serve the best projects through an interactive “Choose your own Adventure” approach.

Session objectives for part 1

• Identify key barriers and considerations to the early development of hydropower and pumped storage hydropower (PSH),especially those that could be addressed through improved policy frameworks.
• Highlight development and/or site related risks that developers should consider.  
• Case studies may include community consent, environmental and social studies good practices, early-stage permitting, electricity system needs and business case identification.

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