Dams

This map locates the world's large operating hydropower dams: structures of 1,000 MW and above with an actual reservoir. Dot size shows installed capacity — what the dam can produce at full load, never what it actually produces over a year. The blue network in the background covers only those rivers that carry one of these dams.

The data comes from Global Energy Monitor's Global Hydropower Tracker (March 2026, CC BY 4.0). Three filters were applied: operating status, the presence of a storage dam (run-of-river plants are excluded, as they impound nothing), and a capacity of at least 1,000 MW. That leaves 259 structures across 44 countries. The ranking adds up installed capacity by country.

Read this map by valley rather than by country: the alignment of the dots traces the rivers that have been harnessed — the Yangtze, the Paraná, the Yenisei, the Columbia. A country with no dot is not a country without hydropower: it may only operate smaller dams or run-of-river plants, two categories deliberately left out here. Conversely, a dense cluster marks a river developed from end to end.

China alone accounts for close to half the capacity in this selection, including the Three Gorges Dam (22,500 MW), the largest power station on earth, and Baihetan (16,000 MW). Itaipu (14,000 MW), on the Paraná, is jointly operated by Brazil and Paraguay. Many of these structures sit on rivers shared between states: whoever holds the dam holds the downstream flow, which makes hydropower a diplomatic matter as much as an energy one.