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Hydropower Facts

NHA

Public support for hydropower is strong

  • 93 percent of America’s registered voters believe that hydropower should play “an important role” in our energy future – this ranks first among all available energy sources.
  • 62 percent of those voters say hydropower should play a “very important role” in our energy future – again, this ranks first among all energy sources in use today.
  • 89 percent of America’s registered voters support or “favor” the use of hydropower as an energy source, with 53 percent “strongly” favoring its use.
  • 75 percent of registered voters say that an “excellent reason to favor the use of hydropower” is because it is a “clean” energy source – 64 percent cite “efficient” as an excellent reason and 62 percent because it is “renewable.”  
  • 95 percent of registered voters believe that we should “maintain existing hydroelectric power plants to produce electricity.”
  • A majority of registered voters believe that “the federal government should find a balance between electricity needs and environmental standards, where each is given equal weight, even if it means the loss of some fish or wildlife habitat.”
  • Support for hydropower as an energy source grows by 5 percent (89 to 94 percent) after registered voters are informed about all of hydropower’s benefits AND impacts on the environment.  
  • Support for hydropower is slightly stronger in the Northwest – WA, OR, ID.
  • 75 percent of those registered voters who support incentives from the federal government to develop more renewable power in the United States favor incentives for new hydropower capacity at existing hydropower projects.  Put another way, they support increasing the efficiency and generating capacity of existing hydro projects.
  • 74 percent of those registered voters who support incentives from the federal government to develop more renewable power in the United States favor incentives for new hydropower capacity at existing non-hydro dams.  Put another way, they support retrofitting non-hydro dams with power generating equipment.

All polling references and figures are taken from Public Opinion Surveys with Registered Voters, January 2002; Bisconti Research, Inc. (BRi). Error of +/- 3 percent.