Erstellt am: 14. 9. 2013 - 12:00 Uhr

Water Wars In Tyrol

The grey areas of the green energy revolution.

When is green not green? Spurred on by targets of the "Austrian energy strategy" to increase renewable energy production by 2020, the Tyrolean power company TIWAG plans to massively expand the existing Kaunertal hydroelectric complex to add an annual 622 Gigawatt hours of electricity to the Austrian grid.

Chris Cummins

This, says TIWAG’s Wolfgang Stroppa, will make Austria less dependent on electricity imports. He argues that by replacing traditional fossil fuel power it will mean Austria reduces its carbon dioxide emissions by 358,000 tonnes per year, the equivalent of the annual pollution of 133,000 passenger cars. TIWAG is selling the project as "a green battery for Austria" and a vital weapon in the fight against climate change.

"Nonsense" says Christoph Walder, of the conservation group WWF: far from being a green battery, the project will sacrifice some of Austria’s last remaining stretches of wild river, ruining some of the country’s most fragile ecosystems. It is the wrong project in the wrong place, he says. "We are strongly behind renewable energy and we are strongly behind hydropower but you can’t build power plants everywhere," says Walder. "It is a siting problem."

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So what are the objections to planning this project at this site? In order to find out more, I travelled high into the Ötztal Mountains to the Rofental where the Venter Ache, a fury of white water, cascades down a narrow canyon. It’s a spectacular sight. But if the plans go ahead, complains the WWF, up to 80% of this water, as well as the water from the nearby Gurgler Ache, will be diverted away from these rivers. The water will be taken down a pair of tunnels, each 6 metres wide, to the massive Gepatsch storage dam 25 kilometres away in the neighbouring Kauner valley.

Critics of the project point to the ecological impact. These rivers are heralded as "sanctuaries" by the WWF and are among the 14% of all Austrian rivers still categorised by the government as having an "exceptional ecological state". Thomas Diem, who is leading the campaign against the TIWAG plans for the WWF, argues that reducing the flow would reduce vital breeding grounds for the Rock Ptarmigan and the Snow Finch and destroy the habitat of many other plants and animals which are close to extinction in north Tyrol.

It’s not just a siting problem says Swiss energy engineer Heini Glauser, who argues that the climate change argument is disingenuous. One of the planned power stations is a "pump-storage system" which involves pumping water up to the dam during periods of low-cost off-peak electric power, for example at weekends or during the night. During periods of high electrical demand the stored water is then released through turbines to produce electric power. "This plant won’t create energy, it will consume energy" complains Christoph Praxmarer, an environmental activist from the citizens’ action committee Lebenswertes Kaunertal. He calls TIWAG’s climate justification "green washing".

Chris Cummins

Heini Glauser at the Gepatsch reservoir in the Kaunertal

Glauser says that, traditionally, the energy to feed European pump-storage systems has come from the "Euromix" - cheap electricity which includes 50% fossil fuels and 30% nuclear power. Praxmarer describes the project as "a monster", saying "it makes me angry because they have been lying to us for years and they are still lying to us. They are selling this as a green project and it is not."

Not so, argues TIWAG’s Wolfgang Stroppa. The pump-storage system will only be one part of the expanded project. The majority of the power will be produced by the water captured naturally or diverted from the rivers of the Ötztal, rather than having been pumped up the mountain. He highlights the flexibility of the storage system, which he says will boost the integration of wind and solar energy because it helps to even out imbalances in supply due to the peaks and troughs in production. The WWF’s Thomas Diem argues this thinking is outdated: "We are also not against pump-storage hydropower installations in general, although they waste energy," he says, "The question is just how much renewable energy supply and consumption will vary in future energy systems, such as a more localised energy production." Diem says the peaks and troughs are flattening out.

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The concerns of local farmer Reinhard Scheiber are more to do with economics and independence. "Of course we need energy," he says, "but not at any price." Scheiber argues that the farmers are dependent on the water. This summer, a drought in the high mountains has meant the cattle will be taken down from the Alms earlier than usual because of a lack of nourishment in the high altitude pastures. "If they take 80% of our water it would be a catastrophe for us." Scheiber fears that climate change will make the situation more precarious. The glaciers, which for generations have served as a natural water storage system, are melting he says, and the farmers can’t afford to channel any water away.

There is also the question of the impact on tourism, which remains the region’s main source of income. Further down the Oetz valley, Bernhard Steidl, who runs a kayak school, takes me on a walk along the foaming water of the Ötztaler Ache where every October the World Extreme Kayaking Championships are held. The river is a mecca for adventure canoeists and rafters, but if the water is diverted from higher up the river, he fears the companies that offer these adventures, will lose their livelihoods. "Now we have 100km of good white water for the entire season but if the plans go ahead that guarantee will be lost. Tourists will no longer be interested in coming to the river."

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Christoph Praxmarer

Lebenswertes Kaunertal’s Christoph Praxmarer points over his shoulder to the wall of the existing Gepatsch dam, a mass of stacked grey boulders and concrete. "It’s ugly, especially in the spring time when it is empty." He fears that the construction, expected to last 6 years, will turn the area into a dusty building site. Praxmarer says locals fear that heavy trucks will clog the local roads and the project will bring noise and fine-particle pollution, endangering residents’ health and scaring away visitors. "So we don’t earn from this project, we just suffer from it. They take our landscape, they take our nature, but they give us nothing in return."

TIWAG’s Wolfgang Stroppa says there has been an intense process to minimise the ecological impact. He accepts that nature will be sacrificed, but says the company, in accordance with European law, will compensate this loss by investing in conservation projects elsewhere.

The one thing all parties agree on is that this project cannot fulfil Austria’s energy needs. Domestic energy consumption in Austria continues to increase at the rate of around 2% per year, and yet Austrians reject most other forms of energy. Austria has committed to reducing its continued dependence on fossil fuels in general and has rejected the idea of fracking - or shale-gas exploration - in the Weinviertel. The deep national rejection of nuclear energy has only been strengthened by the catastrophe at Fukushima in Japan. Heini Glauser is an enthusiastic advocate of solar energy, but that can’t solve all the problems.

If we continue to consume as much energy the demand will outstrip any efforts to increase supply:

"Even if we build this dam, unless we reduce our energy consumption we’ll be faced with the same problem 4 or 5 years later and we would have already sacrificed some of our last free running rivers," says Christoph Walder of the WWF.

FM4 / Chris Cummins

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Reality Check Special: Water Wars In Tirol