Nam Theun 2 Reservoir four years after commissioning: significance of drawdown methane emissions and other pathways

Abstract

Hydro-reservoirs are recognized as potentially significant emitters of methane at the global scale. However, there are still large uncertainties in estimating such emissions at this scale due to the lack of comprehensive measurements of methane emissions in a wide range of climatic zones, for hydro-reservoirs with variable characteristics, and including all emissions pathways. This study presents an assessment of methane emissions for the 2013 year, that is four years after commissioning, for the Nam Theun 2 hydro-system, a 489 km² subtropical reservoir with a large drawdown area. All of the major pathways have been computed here, i.e., ebullition, diffusion, degassing, emissions from the drawdown area, and diffusion from downstream, and included in an emission budget. Emissions from the upstream area strongly dominate when compared to the downstream ones, a feature quite specific to the Nam Theun 2 reservoir. The drawdown area and the emissions by diffusion downstream represented a small contribution to the total emissions. About half of the methane is emitted during the four months of the warm dry season (from mid-February to Mid-June). Total methane emissions in NT2 have decreased from 35.6±2.6 Gg(CH4 ) year-1 in 2010 to 24.5±1.5 Gg(CH4 ) year-1 in 2013 though this difference was not found to be quite statistically significant.