Hydropower and Tidal Energy

What is Hydropower and Tidal Energy?

Within Earth & Environmental Science, which covers our planet, its resources and ecosystems, and how people can protect the environment, this topic explains Hydropower and Tidal Energy. Earth and environment topics show how the planet’s systems shape landscapes, climate and life, with models that make these processes visible.

Check that you can explain Hydropower and Tidal Energy in your own words and give one example from everyday life. If you can do that, you have understood the core idea.

Understanding Hydropower and Tidal Energy helps you explain the environment around you and weigh up how people can protect it.

Hydropower and Tidal Energy in detail

Hydropower uses flowing or falling water to turn turbines, usually by building a dam to create a reservoir, and releasing water as needed, so it can respond quickly to demand. It is reliable and low-carbon, and pumped storage acts as a giant battery. However, dams flood land, displace people, alter river ecosystems and block fish migration.

Tidal energy uses the rise and fall of tides, through barrages across estuaries or underwater turbines, and wave energy uses the motion of waves. Tides are predictable, but suitable sites are limited, and costs are high. Barrages may affect habitats such as mudflats. They are renewable and low in emissions, with growing interest in tidal stream turbines.

How the interactive helps you understand Hydropower and Tidal Energy

Watch the energy stores in the interactive. Use any sliders or buttons it offers to change the values and see how the energy stores responds.

Before you change anything, predict the result. Then change one value at a time and check whether your prediction was right. This is a quick way to build a correct mental model of Hydropower and Tidal Energy.

Real-life uses and examples

• Link Hydropower and Tidal Energy to a real environmental problem and a possible solution.
• Use a diagram of Hydropower and Tidal Energy to describe the steps of a process in order.
• Discuss how human activity changes Hydropower and Tidal Energy, using a named example.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Presenting one cause as the only cause of an environmental change.
• Describing a process without the timescale it works over.
• Learning the definition without testing it. Use the quiz and the interactive to check that you can apply the idea.