China Pays Price for Aggressive Worldwide Hydropower Expansion

A reputation for poor environmental and social practices is coming back to haunt Chinese hydropower companies and derail their efforts to secure dam projects, particularly in the developing world, according to analysts.

The main reason China’s dam builders are having expansion troubles is that “those commissioning dam projects believe that the Chinese are unable to meet internationally recognized environmental and social standards when implementing these projects,” Julian Kirchherr, who studies hydropower at Utrecht University, Netherlands, told Bloomberg Environment.

Expansion is now paramount for China, however, because “the development of new hydro sources has reached saturation at home,” Bloomberg ...