Hydro and Tidal Power

Hydropower is the oldest renewable and still the largest, and pumped storage remains the overwhelming majority of the world’s grid-scale energy storage — a fact usually lost in coverage dominated by lithium batteries.

Tidal is the opposite: small, expensive and uniquely predictable, which is worth something in a system full of variable resources. We cover both, including the drought and permitting pressures that make existing hydro less dependable than its nameplate capacity suggests.