Rural utility to low-carbon industry: Small hydropower and the industrialization of renewable energy in China

Small hydropower (SHP) is a renewable energy that provides electricity for many rural areas in the Global South that lack national grid access. In China, however, SHP has transformed from a community-focused rural utility into to a privatized low-carbon industry that earns revenues from the sale of electricity to the grid. This paper analyzes the policies that enabled this transformation of SHP in China, and the profit motivations and political incentives that shape plant construction and operation. I argue that privatizing and framing SHP as 'low-carbon' makes it more amenable to industrialization, because its value is based on the amount of electricity it generates, not its contribution to poverty alleviation and conservation. Data were collected from interviews with government officials, private investors, and farmers in Xinping county, located in Yunnan province in China's southwest. I find that investors and officials are incentivized to build and operate large-scale SHP systems that have a high installed capacity, are situated in multiple-plant cascades, and that attempt to operate year-round, including during the dry season. Some of these plants reduce streamflow and irrigation water access for farmers. This case thus exposes the inequalities of privatizing and deploying rural renewable energy for low-carbon industrial growth in the absence of strong local environmental and social safeguards.