Date of Award

Spring 6-1-2026

Document Type

Thesis (Undergraduate)

Department

Environmental Studies

First Advisor

Richard B. Howarth

Second Advisor

Christopher S. Sneddon

Abstract

Hydroelectricity stands to be particularly important to a decarbonizing power grid because unlike many renewables it is dispatchable. However, ramping up and down hydropower production at short notice to respond to power demand—hydropeaking—worsens many of the environmental harms of hydroelectricity (Bipa et al., 2024). In Chapter 1, I create a microeconomic framework to explain how and why revenue-motivated dams hydropeak.

In Chapter 2, I assess the extents to which six different case study dams around the US hydropeak, first by decomposing actual flow regime into combinations of counterfactual management objectives, and second with an index of flow variation alignment with power price variation. I qualitatively analyze the results in light of each dam's management goals, ownership structure, and physical characteristics.

A motivation for allowing hydropeaking is that it might offset the emissions of fossil fuel-based peaking, so in Chapter 3, I test this. Depending on the dam, increased hydropeaking can decrease grid emissions, but the size of this effect is limited unless the marginal power source is at least sometimes renewable, which is currently rare. Indeed, if dams do not hydropeak and instead just smooth out pulses of inflow to allow as much water as possible through turbines and generate more power, they offset almost as many emissions as they would under hydropeaking at far less harm to the river system.

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