Apr 20, 2023 · 53m · catalyst
How to build more hydropower
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Laura Pierpoint and Natel Energy CEO Gia Schneider discuss modernizing hydropower, exploring how distributed modular installations, nature-mimicking watershed management, and fish-safe turbine designs can unlock vast carbon-free power while preserving river ecosystems.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 4.9 Guest disagreement 1.4 Shayle pushing back 1.8
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 51:46 Interconnection over permitting reform
When Laura asks if permitting reform is the major missing piece, Gia directly dismisses the focus on permitting to argue that interconnection bottlenecks are the real defining challenge for new builds.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 33:15 Pressing on drought and climate unprofitabilityLaura interrupts Gia to sharply challenge whether extreme swings between floods and severe droughts will simply make hydro projects financially unviable.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 24:08 Correcting the run-of-river and hydrokinetic distinctionGia gently corrects Laura's definition of run-of-river hydro, explaining the physical and civil protection realities that separate hydrokinetic turbines from standard run-of-river pondage.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 21:48 Synthesizing clean tech's modular paradigm shiftLaura demonstrates broad domain expertise by synthesizing Gia's distributed hydro points into the wider clean tech industry shift away from megaprojects toward smaller, modular infrastructure.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hydropower Fleet Capacity, Mechanics, and Grid Reliability | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Laura sets the stage by asking about hydro's current global capacity and operational mechanics. Gia provides a foundational breakdown of potential vs. kinetic energy conversion and hydro's grid balancing capabilities. | |
| Multipurpose Benefits and Ecological Impacts on Rivers | 5 | 5 | 1 | 2 | Laura raises the zero-sum tension between energy generation, agriculture, and river ecosystems, citing the Aswan Dam. Gia reframes river disruption by contrasting monolithic dams with natural obstructions like beaver dams. | |
| Transitioning from Monolithic Megaprojects to Distributed Hydro | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Gia details why multi-gigawatt hydro megaprojects suffer from compounding cost overruns and 15-year timelines. Laura neatly synthesizes the discussion into the broader clean tech shift away from a 'bigger is always better' paradigm. | |
| Evaluating Hydrokinetic and Run-of-River Turbine Systems | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Laura conflates dam-free hydrokinetic turbines with run-of-river systems. Gia clarifies the technical terminology, explaining the severe debris and civil cost challenges that make in-stream hydrokinetic turbines difficult to scale broadly. | |
| Mid-Roll Sponsorship: Bloom Energy and Engie | 5 | 4 | 1 | 4 | Following the mid-roll ad read, Laura pauses Gia to press on whether extreme climate volatility and drought will make hydro assets probabilistically unprofitable. Gia explains digital forecasting and regional grid interconnectivity. | |
| Groundwater Recharge and Watershed Restoration Strategies | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | Laura asks if disappearing snowpack means California must build massive new surface reservoirs. Gia redirects the focus away from traditional surface reservoirs to distributed aquifer recharge and agricultural field flooding. | |
| Designing Fish-Safe Blades for High-Survival Hydro | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Gia walks through the fluid dynamics of Natel Energy's turbine blade design, highlighting how a blunt leading-edge stagnation zone and forward swoop allow safe fish passage without sacrificing power output. | |
| Fleet Repowering Opportunities, Policy, and Interconnection Bottlenecks | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Laura asks about federal policy incentives and permitting reform. Gia highlights the 130 GW fleet repowering opportunity and argues that interconnection queue delays represent a more pressing barrier than permitting reform. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Schneider: Global operating hydropower capacity is roughly 1.3 terawatts
“Today we have about 1.3 terawatts of installed operating hydropower. And that represents about the it's the majority of renewable energy produced in the world today. It's the third largest source of electricity after natural gas and coal.”
Schneider: Hydro and gas dispatch in parallel across US power markets
“If you looked last summer in the United States, in every power market where you have hydro and you've, you pulled up the dispatch curve, the daily dispatch curve of assets in a particular ISO, what you'd see is if you have hydro and you have gas, Hydro and gas…”
Schneider: Pacific Northwest dams powered US WWII aircraft manufacturing
“If you look at when a lot of the big dams were constructed in the Pacific Northwest they coincided with completion in the early, like, late thirties, early forties, and that really let, you know, put us in a position actually entering World War II where we had…”
Schneider: Majority of Global Rivers Suffer Mild to Severe Disruption
“At the end of the day the majority of our rivers globally, unfortunately, are heavily modified and in exist in a state of severe, you know, mild to severe disruption and disconnection.”
Schneider: Historic US Rivers Were Naturally Filled With Beaver Dams and Logjams
“In the U.S., if you were to rewind the clock several hundred years, what you would have found in the U.S. Is a landscape full of rivers, full of obstructions, but those obstructions were things like naturally occurring log jams and beaver dams, and they could …”
Schneider: Aswan Dam Lost Hydropower Productivity Due to Rapid Silt Buildup
“In the Aswan example, for example, there's so much silt moving in the river, that, that, you know, a side effect of that dam is that it rapidly, unfortunately, became a lot less productive as a hydropower asset because it filled up with silt, and there wasn't …”
Schneider: Hydropower megaprojects take 10 to 15 years to build
“They take a very long time. We're talking 10 to 15 years to build, and that time compounds the cost estimation challenge because a lot of things can happen in 10 years.”
Schneider: Scaling hydro requires shifting from megaprojects to distributed projects
“The way in which we're going to increase capacity is, we firmly believe, A shift that moves away from just building megaprojects, and instead looks at building projects that are more distributed in nature, and, which means smaller by moving to smaller projects…”
Schneider: High costs restrict hydrokinetic power to niche applications
“What we've generally seen is that hydrokinetic is, makes sense in very certain specific applications, but it's been hard to get costs to the point where it's as broadly applicable as we'd love it to be.”
Schneider: Dam ecological impact depends on water flow design, not size
“That again, as we've dug into this more, is that there, it does, it seems very clear as you dig into the science around the fact that there are small dams that have major negative impacts. It's not a size thing. You could have big dams, you could have small da…”
Schneider: Aridification will force some hydro facilities to downsize or close
“There absolutely will be cases like that where it doesn't make sense anymore. There are places, unfortunately, geographically, where there's a clear drying and a ratification trend that Over some time period will mean that, you know, an existing hydro facility…”
Schneider: 2022 was a strong hydro year due to Pacific Northwest output
“Hydro, despite the West being in an overall drought, it was a pretty great year for hydropower, and it was because the conditions for hydro in the Pacific Northwest were solid, and those assets were able to, were, you know, played a critical role, frankly, in …”
Schneider: A Snow-Free Sierra Nevada May Be Only a Decade Away
“And I think that the urgency around those reservoirs has increased as some of the science has become more clear that the prospect of a snow-free Sierra is something that unfortunately is probably not hundreds of years away, but is, you know, something again th…”
Schneider: California Overdraws One Million Acre-Feet of Groundwater Annually
“At the end of the day, water in the ground for the last, for all of California's recent history, actually going back decades, ground, we have had a net draft on groundwater pretty much every year of something like a million acre feet a year.”
Schneider: Reintroducing Beavers Restores Perennial Stream Flow via Groundwater Recharge
“Projects that have been done to reintroduce beaver into streams that are going dry every year in the summer, and once beaver are reintroduced, you have re-perennialized flow. Again, that's just simply a matter of getting, having water sit on the landscape for …”
Schneider: Natel's hydro turbine blades achieve over 99% fish safety
“And those two things basically, you know, create a turbine blade that has now been shown many times over to be greater than 99% safe for fish passage.”
Schneider: Natel Energy is considering hydro upgrade projects exceeding one gigawatt
“Probably the largest project we're contemplating right now would be over a gigawatt, where there's many you know, we're talking, you know, you're talking 10, a lot of these bigger hydro projects have, particularly the run of river ones, where again, you can ha…”
Schneider: ~130 GW of global hydropower will turn over within a decade
“There's something like a 130 gigawatts or so of hydro that is going to turn over here in the next decade, and i.e. Existing operating assets need new, new equipment real opportunity to make sure that those plants Stay online.”
Schneider: The infrastructure bill allocated ~$2.5B for hydropower upgrades and development
“So yes, I think in the infrastructure bill, which was passed two years ago, there was a very big chunk of money directly for upgrading hydro and making various improvements and in, in, in existing hydro as well as advancing development. Something like two and …”