Climate impacts on Latin American hydropower

Activity carried out by Chiara D'Adamo (tutored by Prof. Laura Savoldi and Daniele Lerede) in the framework of an internship at IEA.

Objective of the activity: Quantitative analysis of the climate impacts on Latin American hydropower.

Framework of the activity: 

Hydropower is particularly susceptible to the adverse impacts of climate change because it is directly affected by changing patterns in rainfall and temperatures. Latin America, on its side, is one of the most vulnerable region and hydropower still accounts for around 80 % of its renewable energy mix.

The aim of the work was to understand how the capacity factors of more than 370 hydroelectric power plants would vary in the 13 selected countries (the ones with the highest installed capacity of hydropower in both Central and South America) by combining data from different climate models.

5 General Circulation Models (GCMs) and 4 Global Hydrological Models (GHMs) have been analyzed, and 4 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenarios – that correspond to different global temperature outcomes linked to different levels of GHG concentration – have been considered in order to assess all the possible future perspectives. These 80 total combinations have been applied to 17 time-steps comparing the value of the capacity factor for each plant in the baseline period 1970-2000 with forecasts for 5-years time-steps from 2020 up to 2100.

Data analysis is essential to assess climate impacts, to identify similar behaviours among countries and link them to possible common causes, in order to provide potential solutions to enhance climate resilience.