The Vulnerable Amazon: The Impact of Climate Change on the Untapped Potential of Hydropower Systems

Schaeffer, Roberto; Szklo, Alexandre; Lucena, André F.P.; Soria, Rafael; Chavez-Rodriguez, Mauro F.

doi:10.1109/mpe.2013.2245584

Cited by 29 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Finally, the distribution of a climate ensemble is not a true probability distribution but instead an expert judgement with respect to potential future climatic conditions (Moss et al 2010) and therefore assigning probability statistics to them might be misleading (Taylor et al 2012;Collins and Knutti 2013). Nonetheless, for the purpose of analysing impacts of climate change, GCMs are still the only credible tools currently available to simulate the physical processes that determine global climate, and are used as a basis for assessing climate change impacts on natural and human systems, especially when there is a need to parameterise the probability space (Schaeffer et al 2013a;Parkinson and Djilali 2015).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of previous studies quantify impacts of climate change on energy systems at national (CEPAL 2012;Liu et al 2016), regional (Schaeffer et al 2013b;DOE 2015) and global level (van Vliet et al 2016). The magnitude of climate change impacts on hydropower generation is usually assessed by running a baseline calibrated hydrological model driven by various climate projections as input forcing data, followed by an electricity generation model (Hay et al 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing uncertainty of climate change impacts on long-term hydropower generation using the CMIP5 ensemble—the case of Ecuador

et al. 2017

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This study presents a method to assess the sensitivity of hydropower generation to uncertain water resource availability driven by future climate change. A hydrology-electricity modelling framework was developed and applied to six rivers where 10 hydropower stations operate, which together represent over 85% of Ecuador's installed hydropower capacity. The modelling framework was then forced with bias-corrected output from 40 individual global circulation model experiments from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 for the Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 scenario. Impacts of changing climate on hydropower resource were quantified for 2071-2100 relative to a baseline period 1971-2000. Results show a wide annual average inflow range from + 277% to − 85% when individual climate experiments are assessed. The analysis also show that hydropower generation in Ecuador is highly uncertain and sensitive to climate change since variations in inflow to hydropower stations would directly result in changes in the expected hydropower potential. Annual hydroelectric power production in Ecuador is found to vary between − 55 and + 39% of the mean historical output when considering future inflow patterns to hydroelectric reservoirs covering one standard deviation of the CMIP5 RCP4.5 climate ensemble.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing uncertainty of climate change impacts on long-term hydropower generation using the CMIP5 ensemble—the case of Ecuador

et al. 2017

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“…The costs of dams are much more difficult to estimate than other energy projects because each dam must be constructed to work within its particular environmental, geological, and hydrological conditions 36 . Although large-scale hydropower is often seen as an attractive possibility for the Amazon region, economic uncertainties driven by climate change, land use change, and sensitivity to extreme drought events, greatly affect projections of the economics of operation and power generation 37,38 .…”

Section: Sustainable Solutions For Amazonian Riversmentioning

confidence: 99%

Damming the rivers of the Amazon basin

Latrubesse

Arima

Dunne

et al. 2017

Nature

610

473

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SummaryMore than 100 hydropower dams have already been built in the Amazon basin and numerous proposals for further dam constructions are under consideration. The accumulated negative environmental effects of built and proposed dams, if constructed, will trigger massive hydrophysical and biotic disturbances that will impact the Amazon basin's floodplains, estuary, and sediment plume. By introducing a Dam Environmental Vulnerability Index (DEVI) we quantify the current and potential impacts of dams in the basin. The scale of foreseeable environmental degradation indicates the need for collective action among nations and states to avoid cumulative, far-field impacts. We suggest institutional innovations to assess and avoid the likely impoverishment of Amazon rivers.

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“…In the case of the hydropower, we have allowed the model to repower existing plants but limited the remaining potential for new hydropower plants in the Amazon biome to 20 GW 95 . In the case of wind resources, the regional potential inserted in BLUES is detailed according to the average capacity factor ( Figure S24).…”

Section: Energy Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%