How AI could help bring a sustainable reckoning to hydropower

Hydropower has been stirring up controversies since the early 2000s. Despite being promoted as a solution to mitigate climate change, the hydropower bubble burst when researchers discovered in 2005 that hydropower dams are responsible for huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Hydropower dams' walls restrict the flow of rivers and turn them into pools of stagnant water. Reservoir surfaces and turbines then release methane into the atmosphere. Methane makes up approximately 80 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted from hydropower dams, peaking in the first decade of the dams lifecycle.