Vilela Thais, Reid John
Conservation Strategy Fund, Washington DC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 Jun 26;12(6):e0179393. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179393. eCollection 2017.
This paper describes and validates the HydroCalculator Tool developed by Conservation Strategy Fund. The HydroCalculator Tool allows researchers, policy-makers and citizens to easily assess hydropower feasibility, by calculating traditional financial indicators, such as the levelized cost of energy, as well as greenhouse gas emissions and the economic net present value including emissions costs. Currently, people other than project developers have limited or no access to such information, which stifles informed public debate on electric energy options. Within this context, the use of the HydroCalculator Tool may contribute to the debate, by facilitating access to information. To validate the tool's greenhouse gas calculations, we replicate two peer-reviewed articles that estimate greenhouse gas emissions from different hydropower plants in the Amazon basin. The estimates calculated by the HydroCalculator Tool are similar to the ones found in both peer-reviewed articles. The results show that hydropower plants can lead to greenhouse gas emissions and that, in some cases, these emissions can be larger than those of alternative energy sources producing the same amount of electricity.
本文介绍并验证了保护战略基金开发的水电计算器工具。该水电计算器工具使研究人员、政策制定者和公民能够通过计算传统财务指标（如平准化能源成本）以及温室气体排放量和包括排放成本在内的经济净现值，轻松评估水电的可行性。目前，除项目开发商外，其他人获取此类信息的机会有限或根本无法获取，这抑制了关于电能选择的明智的公众辩论。在此背景下，水电计算器工具的使用可能通过促进信息获取为辩论做出贡献。为了验证该工具的温室气体计算结果，我们复制了两篇同行评议文章，这两篇文章估计了亚马逊流域不同水电站的温室气体排放量。水电计算器工具计算出的估计值与两篇同行评议文章中的结果相似。结果表明，水电站会导致温室气体排放，而且在某些情况下，这些排放可能比生产相同电量的替代能源的排放更大。
