Hydropower is the most important renewable resource for electricity production in the Alpine areas: it has advantages for the global CO2 balance but creates serious environmental impacts. RES-e Directives require a renewable electricity enhance but, at the same time, the Water Framework Directive obliges Member States to reach or maintain a water bodies "good" ecological status, intrinsically limiting the hydropower exploitation. Administrators daily face an increasing demand of water abstraction but lack reliable tools to rigorously evaluate their effects on mountain rivers and the social and economical outputs on longer time scale. The SHARE project intends to develop, test and promote a decision support system to merge on an unprejudiced base, river ecosystems and hydropower requirements. This approach will be led using existing scientific tools, adjustable to transnational, national and local normative and carried on by permanent panel of administrators and stakeholders.

After the kick-off meeting of 9th October 2009 the SHARE project is definitely on! The event was hosted by "Uniamo le Energie", a one week event dedicated to the themes of renewable energies. The project was presented to the public and the activities that will be developed during the next three years were illustrated. During the kick-off meeting the partnership shared and planned the main activities for the next months of work. Since January, the SHARE website is available at the link www.share-alpinerivers.eu. Technical activities have been started focussing attention on more methodological tasks for the application of the multi criteria analysis approach to the management of alpine rivers.

A concrete software for Multi Criteria Analysis called SESAMO has started to be tested by the partners. This tool made the multi criteria analysis approach a visible item supporting the decision makers' choices and allowing them to consider different important elements (social, economical, environmental, ...) when deciding if and how and building & managing hydropower plants. The definition of the indicators that should be collected for feeding the software has started; these indicators will be reviewed for the different national pilot case studies, the basins that have been chosen in every country for concrete testing the analysis. Every preliminary set of indicators will be available for the partners on the internal project web platform to allow the best exchange of each other experience.

The website will be implemented with major information and a newsletter will be diffused. The SHARE partnership will organise workshop and seminar that should be addressed to the stakeholders. In concomitance with the next Project Meeting in Graz (Austria) an internal workshop will be organized as a first test for detailing the multi criteria analysis approach and the use of SESAMO software. The implementation of pilot case studies will allow start with the more experimental activities.