Abstract
SummaryAs large renewable capacities penetrate the European energy system and the climate faces significant alterations, the future operation of hydropower reservoirs might deviate from today. In this work, we first analyze the changes in hydropower operation required to balance a wind- and solar-dominated European energy system. Second, we apply runoff data obtained from combining five different global circulation models and two regional climate models to estimate future reservoir inflow at three CO2 emissions scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5). This enables us to address the climate model uncertainty reported in previous literature. Despite large interannual and intermodel variability, significant changes are measured in the climate model signal between today and future climate. Annual inflow decreases by 31% (20%) in Southern countries and increases by 21% (14%) in Northern countries for high (mid)-emission scenarios. Projections also show impacts on seasonal profiles and more frequent and prolonged droughts in Mediterranean countries.
Highlights
The power sector is facing a major transformation from using fossil fuel generators to renewable and carbon-neutral ones
Changes in the hydropower operation as wind and solar penetration increases For the sake of clarity, we focus the discussion on hydropower in Norway and Spain as countries representative of Northern Europe and Mediterranean climates and which are projected to experience contrasting impacts of the decarbonization of the energy system (Victoria et al, 2020) and of climate change on hydro resources (Van Vliet et al, 2016; Turner et al, 2017)
We evaluate the absolute change in mean daily runoff at the end of the century (EOC) period relative to the beginning of the century (BOC) (Equation 12)
Summary
The power sector is facing a major transformation from using fossil fuel generators to renewable and carbon-neutral ones. The European Green Deal proposed by the European Commission (COM, 2019) envisions a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. This target could be achieved by relying on wind and solar power generation balanced by hydropower and other dispatchable generators (Victoria et al, 2020; Bogdanov et al, 2019). Owing to the variable nature of wind and solar generation, their increasing penetration in power grids strengthens the need for balancing and demands a modified operation of hydropower plants (Pfeiffer et al, 2021). The operation of hydropower to balance wind and solar could be beneficial because a seasonality similar to the natural river discharge is retained (Sterl et al, 2021)
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