IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v10y2017i9p1343-d110935.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Climate Change on the Generation of Hydroelectric Power—A Case Study in Southern Spain

Author

Listed:
  • Kepa Solaun

    (School of Sciences, Universidad de Navarra, Campus Universitario, 31080 Pamplona, Spain
    Factor CO2, Colón de Larreátegui, 26, Planta 1, 48006 Bilbao, Spain)

  • Emilio Cerdá

    (Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales (ICEI), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, Pozuelo de Alarcón, 28223 Madrid, Spain)

Abstract

Climate change could pose a significant threat to the energy sector in various countries. The objective of this study is to analyze the long-term impact of changes in precipitation and water availability on hydroelectric production. To do so, the study focuses on three hydroelectric power plants in Southern Spain combining climatological, technical and economic data and projections. A physical model has been designed that reproduces the plants’ operations and incorporates various scenarios for the evolution of contributions to the basin. The results predict a 10 to 49% drop in production by the end of the century, depending on the plant and scenario. This decrease in production, in accordance with our economic and operational hypotheses, would significantly affect the operating margins of the facilities and, in certain scenarios, could reach an economically unsustainable level by the end of the century. An investment analysis has been carried out as well, showing that climate change may jeopardize future investments in similar facilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Kepa Solaun & Emilio Cerdá, 2017. "The Impact of Climate Change on the Generation of Hydroelectric Power—A Case Study in Southern Spain," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:9:p:1343-:d:110935
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/9/1343/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/9/1343/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mir-Artigues, Pere & Cerdá, Emilio & del Río, Pablo, 2015. "Analyzing the impact of cost-containment mechanisms on the profitability of solar PV plants in Spain," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 166-177.
    2. Birthal, P.S. & Negi, Digvijay S. & Kumar, Shiv & Aggarwal, Shaily & Suresh, A. & Khan, Md. Tajuddin, 2014. "How Sensitive is Indian Agriculture to Climate Change?," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 69(4), pages 1-14.
    3. Byman Hamududu & Aanund Killingtveit, 2012. "Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Global Hydropower," Energies, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Schaeffer, Roberto & Szklo, Alexandre Salem & Pereira de Lucena, André Frossard & Moreira Cesar Borba, Bruno Soares & Pupo Nogueira, Larissa Pinheiro & Fleming, Fernanda Pereira & Troccoli, Alberto & , 2012. "Energy sector vulnerability to climate change: A review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    5. Kao, Shih-Chieh & Sale, Michael J. & Ashfaq, Moetasim & Uria Martinez, Rocio & Kaiser, Dale P. & Wei, Yaxing & Diffenbaugh, Noah S., 2015. "Projecting changes in annual hydropower generation using regional runoff data: An assessment of the United States federal hydropower plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 239-250.
    6. Jane Ebinger & Walter Vergara, 2011. "Climate Impacts on Energy Systems : Key Issues for Energy Sector Adaptation," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2271, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Turner, Sean W.D. & Hejazi, Mohamad & Kim, Son H. & Clarke, Leon & Edmonds, Jae, 2017. "Climate impacts on hydropower and consequences for global electricity supply investment needs," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 2081-2090.
    2. Michael Berlemann & Daniela Wenzel, 2018. "Precipitation and Economic Growth," CESifo Working Paper Series 7258, CESifo.
    3. Tihana Škrinjarić, 2023. "What are the short-to-medium-term effects of extreme weather on the Croatian economy?," Working Papers 70, The Croatian National Bank, Croatia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Teotónio, Carla & Fortes, Patrícia & Roebeling, Peter & Rodriguez, Miguel & Robaina-Alves, Margarita, 2017. "Assessing the impacts of climate change on hydropower generation and the power sector in Portugal: A partial equilibrium approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 788-799.
    2. Zhong, Ruida & Zhao, Tongtiegang & He, Yanhu & Chen, Xiaohong, 2019. "Hydropower change of the water tower of Asia in 21st century: A case of the Lancang River hydropower base, upper Mekong," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 685-696.
    3. Maryse Labriet & Santosh Joshi & Marc Vielle & Philip Holden & Neil Edwards & Amit Kanudia & Richard Loulou & Frédéric Babonneau, 2015. "Worldwide impacts of climate change on energy for heating and cooling," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 20(7), pages 1111-1136, October.
    4. Cohen, Stuart M. & Dyreson, Ana & Turner, Sean & Tidwell, Vince & Voisin, Nathalie & Miara, Ariel, 2022. "A multi-model framework for assessing long- and short-term climate influences on the electric grid," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    5. Nathalie Spittler & Ganna Gladkykh & Arnaud Diemer & Brynhildur Davidsdottir, 2019. "Understanding the Current Energy Paradigm and Energy System Models for More Sustainable Energy System Development," Post-Print hal-02127724, HAL.
    6. Schaefli, Bettina & Manso, Pedro & Fischer, Mauro & Huss, Matthias & Farinotti, Daniel, 2017. "The role of glacier retreat for Swiss hydropower production," Earth Arxiv 7z96d, Center for Open Science.
    7. Turner, Sean W.D. & Hejazi, Mohamad & Kim, Son H. & Clarke, Leon & Edmonds, Jae, 2017. "Climate impacts on hydropower and consequences for global electricity supply investment needs," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 2081-2090.
    8. Silvia Soutullo & Emanuela Giancola & María Nuria Sánchez & José Antonio Ferrer & David García & María José Súarez & Jesús Ignacio Prieto & Elena Antuña-Yudego & Juan Luís Carús & Miguel Ángel Fernánd, 2020. "Methodology for Quantifying the Energy Saving Potentials Combining Building Retrofitting, Solar Thermal Energy and Geothermal Resources," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-25, November.
    9. Schaefli, Bettina & Manso, Pedro & Fischer, Mauro & Huss, Matthias & Farinotti, Daniel, 2019. "The role of glacier retreat for Swiss hydropower production," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 615-627.
    10. Wang, Bing & Ke, Ruo-Yu & Yuan, Xiao-Chen & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2014. "China׳s regional assessment of renewable energy vulnerability to climate change," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 185-195.
    11. Nathalie Spittler & Ganna Gladkykh & Arnaud Diemer & Brynhildur Davidsdottir, 2019. "Understanding the Current Energy Paradigm and Energy System Models for More Sustainable Energy System Development," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-22, April.
    12. Craig, Michael T. & Cohen, Stuart & Macknick, Jordan & Draxl, Caroline & Guerra, Omar J. & Sengupta, Manajit & Haupt, Sue Ellen & Hodge, Bri-Mathias & Brancucci, Carlo, 2018. "A review of the potential impacts of climate change on bulk power system planning and operations in the United States," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 255-267.
    13. Bonjean Stanton, Muriel C. & Dessai, Suraje & Paavola, Jouni, 2016. "A systematic review of the impacts of climate variability and change on electricity systems in Europe," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 1148-1159.
    14. Fanny Groundstroem & Sirkku Juhola, 2019. "A framework for identifying cross-border impacts of climate change on the energy sector," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 3-15, March.
    15. Guerra, Omar J. & Tejada, Diego A. & Reklaitis, Gintaras V., 2019. "Climate change impacts and adaptation strategies for a hydro-dominated power system via stochastic optimization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 233, pages 584-598.
    16. Plaga, Leonie Sara & Bertsch, Valentin, 2023. "Methods for assessing climate uncertainty in energy system models — A systematic literature review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 331(C).
    17. Lucena, André F.P. & Hejazi, Mohamad & Vasquez-Arroyo, Eveline & Turner, Sean & Köberle, Alexandre C. & Daenzer, Kathryn & Rochedo, Pedro R.R. & Kober, Tom & Cai, Yongxia & Beach, Robert H. & Gernaat,, 2018. "Interactions between climate change mitigation and adaptation: The case of hydropower in Brazil," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1161-1177.
    18. Byman H. Hamududu & Hambulo Ngoma, 2020. "Impacts of climate change on water resources availability in Zambia: implications for irrigation development," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 2817-2838, April.
    19. Jonas Savelsberg & Moritz Schillinger & Ingmar Schlecht & Hannes Weigt, 2018. "The Impact of Climate Change on Swiss Hydropower," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-23, July.
    20. Jaewon Jung & Sungeun Jung & Junhyeong Lee & Myungjin Lee & Hung Soo Kim, 2021. "Analysis of Small Hydropower Generation Potential: (2) Future Prospect of the Potential under Climate Change," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-26, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:9:p:1343-:d:110935. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.