Turns out China’s hydropower push isn’t limited to giant centrally managed projects like the controversial Three Gorges Dam… An army of small hydro plants with capacities of less than 25MW are lighting up local areas at a growing rate. For the most part, the plants are supplying local needs, not feeding the national grid — which is good news, considering that construction has helped preserve woodlands and combat erosion. The plants are enabling communities that would otherwise rely on deforestation for cooking and heating fuel needs to switch to electric.

The outcome of this bottom up approach? The small plants generate 50,000 MW total today, a figure that is growing at about 6,000 MW annually, according to this summary by Bruno de Wachter in the Leonardo ENERGY blog.

For more detail, see a longer article from India’s Hindu Business Line, which links the trend to Indian consultant V.K. Damodaran — a U.N. expert who has long championed small hydropower solutions for rural communities without getting much traction in his native country, India.