Given growing energy demands and continued interest in hydropower development, it is important that we rethink hydropower to avoid detrimental socioenvironmental consequences of large dams planned in regions such as the Amazon River basin. Here, we show that ~63% of total energy planned to be generated from conventional hydropower in the Brazilian Amazon could be harnessed using in-stream turbines that use kinetic energy of water without requiring storage. At five of the nine selected planned dam sites, the entirety of energy from planned hydropower could be generated using in-stream turbines by using only a fraction of the river stretch that large dams would affect. We find the cost (US$ kWh⁻¹) for in-stream turbines to be ~50% of the conventional hydropower cost. Our results have important implications for sustainable hydropower development in the Amazon and worldwide through transition to power generation methods that meet energy needs while minimizing the negative socioenvironment impacts.

鉴于不断增长的能源需求和对水电开发的持续兴趣，重要的是，我们必须重新考虑水电，以避免在亚马逊河流域等地区规划的大型水坝对社会和环境造成不利影响。在这里，我们表明，计划中的巴西传统亚马逊水力发电所产生的总能源中，约63％可以使用流水轮机利用，而流水轮机利用水的动能而不需要存储。在九个选定的计划大坝站点中的五个中，计划中的水力发电所产生的全部能源都可以使用流水轮机发电，而只使用大坝会影响的河段的一部分。我们找到了成本（美元kWh ^-1），流式涡轮机的费用约为常规水力发电成本的50％。通过过渡到满足能源需求的发电方法，同时最大程度地减少负面的社会环境影响，我们的研究结果对亚马逊地区乃至全球的可持续水电开发具有重要意义。