Impacts of climate change on hydropower development and sustainability: a review

The impacts of climate change on hydropower development are complex, often interactive, issues. Many studies have already focused on climate change impacts on the hydrologic cycle. This paper downsizes the analysis and focuses on water resources for power generation. The concentration is on a review of the impacts of climate change on hydropower development from three different spatial scopes; i.e., global, national and regional scales. Climate change is a global phenomenon; however, the effects of climate change on hydropower generation are not uniform over different spatial scales. The diverse effects depend on such factors as local hydrological conditions and geographic features. This demonstrates the necessity of drilling down the analysis of climate change impacts to the sub-national, or local scale of hydropower generation. This paper characterizes both direct and indirect factors of climate change impacts on hydropower, and, elaborates on how several supporting elements contribute to these two categories. It also attempts to provide two strategies for mitigating climate change impacts on hydropower generation and maintaining global energy sustainability. One strategy is to increase the proportion of hydropower generation as a renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The second strategy is to optimize hydropower operation and management to adapt to the varied climate conditions. Finally, some suggestions on how to cope with climate change and hydropower development have been put forward to facilitate discussion on these important issues with policy decision makers. (paper)