THE AMERICAN CONTINENT HYDROPOWER DEVELOPMENT AND THE SUSTAINABILITY: A REVIEW

The present review compares and takes the main ideas around hydropower development in eight countries of the American continent, identifying its advantages and disadvantages, showing a vision concerning sustainability. It is conclusive that there are impacts for each megawatt produced with hydropower, and the generation structure that uses the water resource of natural currents is not highly clean. Moreover, there is the mistaken criterion for developing a renewable hydropower project related to sustainability, a wrong approach, as demonstrated with the review. The examination in the eight countries of America some analyzes and the most concludes that, before considering a construction with thousands of dollars of investment and water contained in dams, the social and environmental analysis must respond to the restrictions on building new hydropower projects, promoting other unconventional renewable energy sources development. It is recommended to determine an objective quantitative approach of hydropower combining hydrology, energy efficiency, and interaction scenarios of future climate change to know the best energy grids diversifying balanced renewable and no renewable sources for each country.