What’s more, dams don’t last forever. They need to be retired and dismantled and this bears a high financial cost, too. „The cost of removing a dam once its useful life is over is extremely high, and should be taken into account when computing the total cost of a new hydro development,“ Moran notes. „If the cost of removal had to be included, many dams wouldn‘t be built. It would be far more expensive to produce a kilowatt-hour of electricity via a hydro complex with a useful life of 30 to 50 years, like those under construction in Brazil.“