Austria’s power industry is all packed and ready to go to exploit the remaining economically viable potential of hydropower for electricity production. But last spring, when the Austrian Ministry of Economic Affairs presented its National Hydropower Master Plan, it was already clear that its implementation would not be a clean sweep. There was no approval from the provincial governors, who in Austria are the ones in charge of licensing procedures (even though some of them had already presented their own master plans for a hydropower step-up); the national plan, developed in collaboration with the power industry, had not been coordinated with the Ministry of Environment (BMLFUW), which is responsible for supervising the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive; and environmental NGOs and other pressure groups were even less engaged in the debate. In 2008, a desirable broad social consensus was therefore not existent.
(Source: aqua press Int. 1/2009)
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