With major geopolitical and environmental events having significant impact on the energy sector and many populations around the world, environmental justice has quickly become a complex and contentious topic of global conversation.

Workforce Development in the aging hydropower industry is not for the faint of heart. Small but mighty, the Hydropower Foundation (HF) jumps headfirst into delivering programs and activities that offer a solution to the growing workforce challenges of the waterpower community. As a not-for-profit supporting clean, reliable, renewable energy, the Foundation produces tailored educational events to expose students to waterpower industries and the career opportunities that lay within. Specifically, students pursuing post-secondary education are hand-picked to learn about the industry, gain career support, and meet hiring organizations. Our successful and well-received programs engage the academic community and industry stakeholders to produce programs with an eye toward gaining the interest of the next-generation workforce.

With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the American electric grid is set to see a windfall of incentives and investment in wind, solar, geothermal, battery energy storage and hydropower. The Infrastructure Bill includes funding for renewable energy demonstration projects, including $84 million for enhanced geothermal systems, $100 million for wind energy, and $80 million for solar energy. While this is certainly helpful for America to achieve a greener grid and future, it is sure to exacerbate a growing problem the grid has been experiencing since the advent of wind and solar power popularity, which is what to do with the excess energy when more power is produced than is being consumed.

How can Build Back Better not include a staple like hydropower? According to the most recently available data from the State of Oregon, hydropower represents 37% of our resource mix, coal 27%, natural gas 25%, wind 5%, and solar around 1%. The Pacific Northwest, including Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Western Montana, is the largest hydropower producing region in the nation, representing about 40% of US hydropower output.

Each year, dam owners and hydroelectric power producers capture and remove tons of man-made debris, trash, and garbage from our lakes and rivers.  This reduces the load on what is entering our oceans where there is currently a large focus on cleaning the oceans of the floating trash and plastic.  The most notable of these efforts is that of the OceanCleanup® which is targeting the 5 large swirling trash fields in the ocean.  Inland, however, is challenging and this is where dam owners have a tremendous opportunity to tout their contribution in preventing plastics and other trash from reaching the ocean where it will break down into microplastics to disrupt the global food chain in incomprehensible ways.