Impacts of climate change on hydropower generation in China

Abstract

Analyzing the impact of climate change on China’s hydropower system can make great contribution to understanding the feedback mechanism of the climate change on energy system. In this work, an econometric model for regional hydropower generation is constructed to explore the impact of climate factors on hydropower generation in different regions of China by using the monthly panel data of 28 provinces in China. Further, we also make a prediction for the changes of hydropower generation in China caused by the changes of climatic factors under the three climate change scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) proposed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fifth assessment report. The results show that: (1) At the national level, the influences of climatic factors on hydropower generation are significant, the elasticity coefficients of rainfall, heating degree day (HDD), cooling degree day (CDD) and sunshine duration are 0.081, −0.016, 0.089 and −0.043 respectively. (2) The impacts of climatic factors on the hydropower generation in the northern and southern regions of China are different. The effect of rainfall on the hydropower generation is significant in the southern regions, but not in the northern region. The CDD has a significant effect on both the northern and southern regions, and the latter is greater (0.136%). The impact of HDD on the northern area is significant, while its influence on the southern area is not significant. The influence of sunshine duration is not significant in any region in China. (3) Compared with the year of 2011, the total changes of hydropower output caused by climate factors by 2100 under the RCP8.5, RCP4.5 and RCP2.6 scenarios are 153.29 billion kWh, 67.49 billion kWh and 22.10 billion kWh, respectively. The results imply that the hydropower is sensitive and vulnerable to climate fluctuation, leading to many uncertainties for its development in the future. Finally, some policy implications are proposed for the planning of hydropower in China.