Dataset of the History and Driving Factors of Hydropower Development in China

The hydropower station dataset comprises three components: international data, national data, and supplementary data. The international data are primarily sourced from global hydropower databases such as GEM, GloHydroRes, and GPPD; the national data are collected from official statistics, bulletins, and policy records released by the Ministry of Water Resources and the National Energy Administration; and the supplementary data are compiled from archival investigations, project reports, and peer-reviewed literature, ensuring coverage of small and early hydropower stations. The dataset includes 2,918 hydropower stations across 31 provinces and 11 major river basins in China, covering the period of over 100 years . Since the 2010s, we have systematically integrated multi-source records and standardized attributes such as location, installed capacity, commissioning year, operational status, and reservoir characteristics, which form the core structure of this dataset.