water Article Yunnan’s Fast-Paced Large Hydropower Development: A Powershed-Based Approach to Critically Assessing Generation and Consumption Paradigms Thomas Hennig 1, Wenling Wang 2, Darrin Magee 3 and Daming He 4,* 1 Faculty of Geography, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Deutschhausstr. 10, Marburg 35037, Germany;
[email protected] 2 Yunnan Key Laboratory of International Rivers and Transboundary Eco-security, Yunnan University, the 6th Floor of Wenjin Building, No. 2 North Road of the Green Lake, Kunming 650091, Yunnan, China;
[email protected] 3 Hobart & William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva, NY 14456, USA;
[email protected] 4 Asian International River Center, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, Yunnan, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-871-503-4269 Academic Editor: Jay Lund Received: 22 July 2016; Accepted: 17 October 2016; Published: 22 October 2016 Abstract: Southwest China’s Yunnan province is evolving into one of the world’s largest hydro-power-producing regions. It already rivals the world’s largest hydro-producing nations. However, five of Yunnan’s six basins are international and therefore its hydropower development is of great academic and geopolitical interest. While the implementation of large projects on Yunnan’s three large rivers (Jinsha, Mekong and Nu) is relatively well studied, hydropower development outside these three main streams is hardly known. Here, we identified 128 large hydropower projects (≥50 MW) having a capacity of 16.5 GW, along with another 16.4 GW of other types of power generation, neither of which has been discussed in the academic literature yet. The paper utilizes a powershed approach to study the rapid hydropower development underway in Yunnan, both in its implication and challenges (at basin and administrative level) as well as in its trade-offs within the broader electricity context.