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Rethinking energy planning to mitigate the impacts of African hydropower

Nature Sustainability volume 7, pages 879–890 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Around 100 GW of new hydropower projects have been proposed in continental Africa to contribute to meeting future energy demand. Yet, the future expansion of hydropower on the continent faces obstacles due to the impacts of dams on rivers, greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs and increasingly competitive alternative renewable electricity technologies. Here we propose an integrated approach to include these considerations in energy planning. Compared with planning for least-cost energy systems, capacity expansion strategies balancing environmental and techno-economic objectives increase electricity prices and total discounted costs by at most 1.4% and 0.2%, respectively, while reducing impacts on annual hydropower emissions and river fragmentation by at least 50%. Our results demonstrate that refining techno-economic analysis in light of global and local environmental objectives can help policymakers reduce the river fragmentation and greenhouse gas emissions associated with hydropower development at marginal increases in energy costs.

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Fig. 1: Impacts of cost-optimal hydropower expansion.
Fig. 2: Multi-objective integration of energy system optimization and the strategic dam planning approach.
Fig. 3: Analysis of foregone hydropower projects.
Fig. 4: Change in installed capacity after the integration of environmental and climatic objectives.
Fig. 5: Changes in installed hydropower capacity by basin for the integration of environmental and climatic objectives.

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Data availability

The OSeMOSYS-TEMBA energy system model data are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3521841 (ref. 81) in their modified version, including power plant data for more than 600 hydropower projects from the African Hydropower Atlas, which are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7931050 (ref. 82). The African Hydropower Atlas contains technical information about the existing and future hydropower projects and is available online (https://www.hydroshare.org/resource/5e8ebdc3bfd24207852539ecf219d915/). The GRAND database containing information about existing dams worldwide is available thanks to the Global Dam Watch project (https://www.globaldamwatch.org/grand). Emission factors are available from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (https://data.nrel.gov/submissions/171). The SSPs report socio-economic projections using Integrated Assessment Models and are available online (https://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/SspDb/dsd?Action=htmlpage&page=welcome). Figure 3, Supplementary Figs. 3 and 4, and Extended Data Fig. 1 incorporate data from the HydroSHEDS v.1 database, which is © World Wildlife Fund, Inc. (2006–2022) and has been used herein under licence. The World Wildlife Fund has not evaluated the data as altered and incorporated in these figures, and therefore gives no warranty regarding its accuracy, completeness, currency or suitability for any particular purpose. Portions of the HydroSHEDS v.1 database incorporate data that are the intellectual property rights of © USGS (2006–2008), NASA (2000–2005), ESRI (1992–1998), CIAT (2004–2006), UNEP-WCMC (1993), the World Wildlife Fund (2004), the Commonwealth of Australia (2007), and His Royal Majesty and the British Crown, and are used under licence. The HydroSHEDS v.1 database and more information are available at https://www.hydrosheds.org (ref. 70). All the data to reproduce the results and figures are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8360437 (ref. 83).

Code availability

All the processing scripts to reproduce the results and figures are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8360437 (ref. 83).

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Acknowledgements

A. Carlino acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme GEOCEP under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 870245. A. Carlino was partially funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Actions programme under the project SOS-WATER (grant agreement no. 101059264). A. Castelletti was partially funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under the GoNEXUS project (grant agreement no. 101003722).

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Author notes

  1. Angelo Carlino

    Present address: Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics, Information, and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Angelo Carlino & Andrea Castelletti

  2. Natural Capital Project, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Angelo Carlino, Rafael Schmitt & Anna Clark

  3. Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rafael Schmitt

  4. Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rafael Schmitt

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Contributions

A. Carlino, R.S. and A. Castelletti conceptualized the project. A. Castelletti acquired the funding. A. Carlino and A. Clark curated the data. A. Carlino and A. Clark conducted the formal analyses. A. Carlino, R.S., A. Clark and A. Castelletti devised the methodology. A. Carlino, R.S. and A. Clark visualized the data. A. Carlino prepared the original paper draft. A. Carlino, R.S., A. Clark and A. Castelletti reviewed and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Andrea Castelletti.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Mohammed Basheer and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Classification of proposed hydropower projects under the approaches considered.

We report the classification of individual hydropower projects (always selected, selected at least once, and never selected) under the energy system planning (a), strategic dam planning (b), and after the integration (c).

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1 and 2, Figs. 1–25, Table 1 and refs. 1–22.

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Carlino, A., Schmitt, R., Clark, A. et al. Rethinking energy planning to mitigate the impacts of African hydropower. Nat Sustain 7, 879–890 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01367-x

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