Surely we need dams to produce cheap electricity?
Hydroelectricity is cheap to produce – once the dams are built. The problem is the huge costs of building dams and the long time it takes to build them. Actual costs for hydropower dams are almost always far higher than estimated costs; in a number of cases, the actual cost was more than double the estimated cost. The Itaipu Dam in South America cost $20 billion and took 18 years to build. This was 488% higher than originally estimated. Electricity passes over an African village (Karin Retief)Dams often produce less power than promised. Dam promoters frequently overestimate how much power their dams will produce and fail to take into account the impacts of droughts. In addition, the transmission lines needed to distribute the power generated by the dam are often inefficient and expensive. Too often in many poor countries where large dams are being built, the grid does not cover rural areas where most people live, and the cost of extending the grid to them is not included in project cos
