Hydropower is still the most important renewable resource for electricity production in Europe: it shows clear advantages for the global CO2 balance but creates ecological impacts on a local scale. Therefore, hydroelectric production has to be maintained and likely increased following the demand trend. EU countries must also achieve their share of renewable electricity production according to the 2001/77 (RES-e Directive). On the other hand, hydropower utilization often involves severe hydrological changes, damages the connectivity of water bodies and injures river ecosystems. The 2000/60/CE (WF Directive) obliges member States to reach by 2015 a “good” ecological status in water bodies.
Competition between water users (for drinking, irrigation, industrial processes, power generation, etc.) is becoming a serious problem, and there is a strong need of a more accurate planning and management optimization of the resources. Usually stakeholders lack reliable tools to evaluate the effects of water withdrawal, deal with water conflict, and be supported in taking policy decisions.

The SEE HYDROPOWER project, developed in the frame of the South East Europe Transnational Cooperation Program, proposes solutions to harmonize water and energy dealing with the following topics:

(a) use-friendly tools, available for public administrations, environmental agencies and hydropower investors for planning and managing water resources and hydropower concessions, considering multi-purposes uses, and taking into account river’s environmental values;
(b) guidelines for preserving rivers with particular concerns to aquatic ecosystems, considering the required environmental flow, macro-habitat quality and related environmental issues;
(c) common strategies & methods to promote the development of small hydropower plants (SHP), distributed in the territory recovering the remaining water power availability, and using an “ecological” approach;
(d) promotion and dissemination of experiences in solving problems among target groups of European countries.