China Three Gorges Corp. hosts a ceremony to launch construction of the Wudongde Hydropower Station on December 24, 2015 (XINHUA)

A bright new era for hydropower stations was ushered in when Laurent Fabius, Chairman of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris and also the French Foreign Minister, brought down his gavel, announcing the birth of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change on December 12, 2015.

Four days later, China's State Council, the highest administrative power in China, approved the construction of the Wudongde Hydropower Station on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The station will be the third largest in China, and the seventh largest in the world.

At the climate change conference in Paris, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that by 2030, non-fossil fuel energy will account for about 20 percent of the country's primary energy consumption. The Wudongde Hydropower Station will inevitably contribute to that goal, as well as promote green development, a core concept in China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

A seamless dam

"The Wudongde Hydropower Station is a cornerstone in China's strategy to transmit electricity from the west to the eastern part of the country, and a key project in the national West Development Strategy," said Lu Chun, Chairman of China Three Gorges Corp. (CTGC). The organization is a leader in hydropower development and operation in both China and the world.

He added, "It will contribute significantly to promoting the country's energy structure and emission reduction, and to social and economic development in the western region."

"Two precipices cleave the sky, overlooking a river that looks like a well," wrote Li Jing, a Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) poet in his poem depicting the rugged terrain around the Jinsha River, a section of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

The Jinsha River is an abundant source of hydropower--an estimated reserve of 112.4 million kw makes the river China's largest hydropower base.

The CTGC has been authorized to construct a cascade comprised of four hydropower stations at the lower reaches of the Jinsha River, including Wudongde, Baihetan, Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba. Together, they will have installed capacity of 46.46 million kw, doubling that of the Three Gorges power plant.

The Wudongde Hydropower Station, the topmost in the cascade, is located between Luquan County of Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, and Huidong County of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in the neighboring Sichuan Province.

"The construction of every hydropower station is a totally new challenge," said Wang Yifeng, Deputy Director of the Wudongde Project Construction Engineering Department of the CTGC, who has 33 years of experience in the hydropower industry.

Nonetheless, the hydropower station is expected to be completed faster than two other stations in the cascade, Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba, according to Yang Jun, a publicity officer from the CTGC.

The hydropower station is expected to be partly operational by August 2020 and completely functional by December 2021. It will also have an installed capacity of 10.2 million kw and an annual power-generating capacity of 38.91 billion kwh, said Yang Zongli, Director of the Wudongde Project Construction Engineering Department of the CTGC. The electricity will not only meet local demand but also be transmitted far and wide throughout the country via major power grids.

"In addition to generating electricity, the Wudongde Hydropower Station will also yield other significant social and economic benefits, such as controlling floods and facilitating river navigation," Yang said.

A three-dimensional rendering of the Wudongde Hydropower Station on the Jinsha River, the upper reaches of the Yangtze River (XINHUA)

A better environment

Moreover, by providing green energy, the power station can save 12.2 million tons of standard coal consumption every year, cutting 30.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and 104,000 tons of sulfur dioxide--equivalent to planting 1.07 billion trees, Yang claimed.

Such a huge public project like Wudongde creates huge social and economic value and immeasurable positive effects, said Hu Angang, Director of the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University, after a visit to the power station's construction site.

At the construction site, water columns shooting up from the mountain creeks were bathed in sunlight, creating beautiful rainbows. "We are spraying water to reduce dust, so as to minimize pollution," said Gu Gongkai, Deputy Director of the Technology Management Office at the Wudongde Project Construction Engineering Department of the CTGC.

"Wudongde is located in a dry and hot valley, where moisture is consumed by heat and a large area of the valley slope is devoid of surface soil, so only sparse vegetation covers the mountains on both sides of the river. Here, both the trees and the soil are our treasure," Gu said.

The vegetation that once grew in the area to be occupied by the reservoir has all been properly transplanted, and some have been used to make the construction site greener. The vegetation and soil are not the only things that were protected--fish were also high on their priority. Not far from the hydropower station is a fish-breeding and releasing station. Zhu Xin, head of the station, is an expert on rare fish.

The station, built in June 2013, was put into operation at the end of 2014. Zhu said that in March 2015, the station released nearly 25,000 rare species of fish into the Jinsha River.

"We expect to release 1.05 million fish into the river annually in the future," Zhu said.

An environmental impact evaluation was conducted before the project was launched. Wang said that the evaluation demonstrates that the Wudongde project will not lead to the deterioration of regional climates, and after the reservoir is filled with water, it will have little negative impacts on people's living environment.

New life

Wudongde is the name of a small mountain town that is fewer than 200 km from Kunming, capital city of Yunnan Province. In the language of the local Yi ethnic group, Wudongde means "a place with good harvest," while in that of another local ethnic group, the Miao, it is "a mist-shrouded place."

In the past, due to a harsh natural environment and inadequate transportation, villagers could only make a living by farming crops resistant to the arid climate or by working in cities.

"The construction of the hydropower station has changed our life," said a villager working at the construction site. Infrastructure in the village has been greatly improved. Muddy roads have been paved, and water cellars built by constructors supply drinking water for people and livestock, as well as water for agricultural irrigation. Hospitals, banks, supermarkets and express companies have also settled into Wudongde, turning the once quiet place into a bustling town.

"I used to work in Kunming, which is more than a seven-hour journey away from here, so I could not return home to help during the harvest season. Now I work at the hydropower station, making much more money than before, and I can go back home every day," said the villager.

Many migrant workers native to Wudongde and its vicinity have now found jobs at the hydropower station. It is estimated that, during the construction phase, the hydropower project will add about 70,000 local jobs every year, and will create 800,000 jobs in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in total, as more than 8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) will be invested to improve roads in neighboring areas.

People who have relocated from the areas to be occupied by the reservoir are also looking to benefit from the project. A total of 31,000 people in 10 counties throughout Sichuan and Yunnan provinces need to be resettled as a result of the Wudongde Hydropower Station's construction.

"These areas along the Jinsha River were secluded and economically backward. So, from last century, many people there have been looking forward to the construction of the hydropower station," said Feng Guoyu, an official in charge of poverty alleviation and resettlement in Sichuan Province's Huidong County.

Resettlement plans have been made, said Wang Lin, the CTGC's General Manager. He said that hydropower development is expected to promote social and economic progress, move relocated people out of poverty, and improve their social welfare.

It has been estimated that the construction period of the Wudongde project will directly improve local economic growth by 2 percentage points, and contribute 2.2 billion yuan ($333 million) to local fiscal revenue.

After completion, the hydropower station will generate about 13 billion yuan ($1.98 billion) worth of power every year, creating industrial added value of about 11.9 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) and bringing in about 13.5 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) to local fiscal revenue.

Moreover, the project will benefit local poor people, and contribute to the realization of government's overall poverty alleviation goal.

The author is a reporter with China Report  magazine

Copyedited by Bryan Michael Galvan

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