Large hydropower and water-storage potential in future glacier-free basins

Abstract

Climate change is causing widespread glacier retreat 1 , and much attention is devoted to negative impacts such as diminishing water resources 2 , shifts in runoff seasonality 3 , and increases in cryosphere-related hazards 4. Here we focus on a different aspect, and explore the water-storage and hydropower potential of areas that are expected to become ice-free during the course of this century. For roughly 185,000 sites that are glacierized at present, we predict the potentially emerging reservoir storage volume and hydropower potential. Using a climate-driven glacier-evolution model 5 and topographical analysis 6 , we estimate a theoretical maximal total storage and hydropower potential of 875 ± 260 cubic kilometres and 1,355 ± 515 terawatt-hours per year, respectively (95% confidence intervals). A first-order suitability assessment that takes into account environmental, technical and economic factors identifies roughly 40 per cent of this potential (355 ± 105 cubic kilometres and 533 ± 200 terawatt-hours per year) as possibly being suitable for realization. Three quarters of the potential storage volume is expected to become ice-free by 2050, and the storage volume would be enough to retain about half of the annual runoff leaving the investigated sites. Although local impacts would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, the results indicate that deglacierizing basins could make important contributions to national energy supplies in several countries, particularly in High Mountain Asia.

Glacier Ice Thickness Estimation and Future Lake Formation in Swiss Southwestern Alps—The Upper Rhône Catchment: A VOLTA Application

“…The formation of proglacial lakes can also affect the stability of mountain glaciers and can partly disengage glacier behavior from climatic perturbations, with such processes having occurred during previous phases of deglaciation [18]. Despite their hazardous nature, the newly emerging proglacial lakes and ice-free basins have the potential to serve as geo-tourism attraction sites or water reservoirs for energy production [19][20][21][22]. Recently, understanding lake formation and modeling the potential location of future lakes has become a necessity not only for timely water resource and hazard management in high mountain regions, but also for glaciological and ecological research concerning the reconstruction of ice motion, landscape evolution [18,23,24], and high-mountain biodiversity [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], respectively.…”

200 years of equilibrium-line altitude variability across the European Alps (1901−2100)

“…Similar trends in the amount and seasonality of river runoff are projected to continue over the twenty-first century and are expected to affect downstream water management, related hazards and ecosystems. There are also socio-economic risks related to rapid changes in mountain glaciers, such as the decline of tourism (Spandre et al 2019;Steiger et al 2019), deterioration of drinking water quality (Hodson 2014), impact on livelihoods (Haeberli and Whiteman 2015;Carrivick and Tweed 2016) and hydro-electric power generation (Farinotti et al 2019).…”

Reservoir Governance in World's Water Towers Needs to Anticipate Multi‐purpose Use

“…Potential locations for new reservoirs that are expected to become ice-free during the 21st century have been assessed worldwide (Farinotti et al, 2016(Farinotti et al, , 2019 because of the importance of reservoirs in reducing the vulnerability of water towers. Previous studies have focused on the hydrological potential for reservoirs or general assessments of government effectiveness and governance risks (Best, 2019;Immerzeel et al, 2020).…”