This paper highlighted the need of hydropower thinking from the perspective of sustainability. Hydropower is a true green and reliable source of energy but simultaneously it has significant impacts on the society and community economically, environmentally, and socially. Normal dam based hydro power generation mechanism is not only helps in producing of electricity but also helps in other ways to the society like irrigation, flood control and domestic water supply. Even large dam can also provide the facility of flood management and create an opportunity for water transportation as done in Three Gorges Project.
Generation of energy through hydroelectric power is one of the way of sustainability (in essence, sustainability means that what we are doing is not at the expense of the future generation) but also devoted to managing environmental, economic and social sustainable issues. Whereas run-of-river based projects only produce electricity which is one of the forms of sustainability.
