Challenge clearly shown for the sector: panel moderation on "New Trends in Hydropower" in Viennahydro 2022
Viennahydro 2022, under the claim of "Hydropower for future generations-21st International Seminar on Hydropower Plants 2022", took place life again after two years of break, from 9th - 11th November 2022.
I was honored to act as the moderator in the panel on "New trends in hydropower", uniting the presentations of EERA as an R&D initiative and ETIP as the industry association within the European Union context, as well as COST - a networking project on sustainable hydropower embracing network-building within Europe - but also reaching beyond. As a precious add-on, ESMAP - the energy sector program of World Bank - and the World Bank's hydropower program and expertise complemented the round of regional and global perspectives. With a most interested audience over 1.5 hours this session looked far beyond technology and clearly pointed at the challenges for the sector: to make hydropower part of the solutions against climate change and the sector to change faster than in the past, includes an urgent need to act towards more gender and diversity, and over and over again to make hydropower more visible, more accepted, and more acknowledged, more diverse and faster.
Thank you for a very enrichting session to the panelists: Dr. Eduard Doujak, Vienna Technical University (for COST and ETIP), Michael Belsnes from Sintef in Norway (for EERA), Nathyeli Ancuna, Gender Specialist in ESMAP/World Bank and Martin Berlengiero, Energy Specialist of World Bank, to tremendously enrich the panel discussion on the importance of hydro in many levels, and myself representing GWNET besides the moderation lead (1st left).
