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Hydropower expansion in eco-sensitive river basins under global energy-economic change

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 213–222 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Vast hydropower resources remain untapped globally, the deployment of which could provide energy-economic benefits but negatively impact riverine ecosystems. Across eco-sensitive river basins, it is unclear how drivers of hydropower expansion, such as rapid economic growth and a low-carbon energy transition, could interact with countervailing forces, such as increasingly cost-competitive variable renewable energy (VRE). Using an integrated energy–water–economy model, we explore the effects of these forces on long-term hydropower expansion in the world’s 20 most eco-sensitive basins, which have high ecological richness and untapped hydropower potential. We find that a low-carbon transition exerts the strongest development pressure, causing deployment exceeding 80% of exploitable potential in more than 72% of eco-sensitive basins by 2050, most of which have limited deployment today. Rapid economic growth induces such extensive deployment in only 44% of eco-sensitive basins. Enhanced integration of VRE reduces deployment, alleviating the impacts of rapid economic growth but not the low-carbon transition. Our findings will help to navigate sustainable hydropower development considering both energy-economic and eco-conservation goals.

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Fig. 1: Selection of eco-sensitive basins.
Fig. 2: Overall level of hydropower deployment in the eco-sensitive basins across eight scenarios.
Fig. 3: Basin-region-scale hydropower deployment.
Fig. 4: Uncertainty in basin-scale mid-century deployment.

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Data availability

The data used and generated in this study are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8008401. The data include a shapefile of the GCAM’s basin-regions, GCAM outputs of electricity generation for each of the eight scenarios and basin-scale untapped hydropower potential, planned hydropower capacity, fish richness and annual fish catch.

Code availability

The Python codes (in Jupyter Notebooks v.6.4.8 with Python 3.8) with relevant instructions to reproduce our analysis and results are available on GitHub at https://github.com/kamal0013/chowdhury-etal_2023_hydropower. The GCAM model is available at https://zenodo.org/records/8231148.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, as part of research in Multi-Sector Dynamics, Earth and Environmental System Modeling Program (contract number DE-AC05-76RL01830). The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    A. F. M. Kamal Chowdhury

  2. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD, USA

    Thomas Wild, Ying Zhang, Matthew Binsted, Gokul Iyer & Son H. Kim

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

    Jonathan Lamontagne

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Contributions

A.F.M.K.C. and T.W. conceptualized the study; A.F.M.K.C. and Y.Z. ran the GCAM scenarios; A.F.M.K.C. conducted the analysis and visualization; A.F.M.K.C. and T.W. wrote the first draft; and A.F.M.K.C., T.W., Y.Z., M.B., G.I., S.H.K. and J.L. edited the paper.

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Correspondence to A. F. M. Kamal Chowdhury.

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Chowdhury, A.F.M.K., Wild, T., Zhang, Y. et al. Hydropower expansion in eco-sensitive river basins under global energy-economic change. Nat Sustain 7, 213–222 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01260-z

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