Although small-scale hydropower is promoted across Europe as a clean energy source, it often delivers minimal electricity while causing significant ecological and social harm. In Albania, for example, hundreds of hydropower plants have dried up rivers and undermined rural livelihoods. In southern Germany's Bavaria, thousands of installations fragment waterways, undermining the goals of the EU Water Framework Directive. In the Czech Republic, weak regulation has enabled biodiversity loss for negligible energy gains. Power vs. Preservation – or Both? explores this tension by asking whether hydropower can coexist with healthy ecosystems and how communities can benefit directly from rivers and streams by living in greater harmony with them, rather than large energy corporations.
The initiative uses solutions-oriented journalism to document emerging alternatives, such as dam removals, ecological redesigns, reimagined local economies and community-driven models that seek to align the energy transition with river conservation.
Image: by Rainer Kwiotek/ Zeitenspiegel.
Image below by Katerina Hefler.
