Fig. 1: Conceptual framework for assessing the impacts of climate-related extremes on energy decarbonization expansion pathways within the Lower Mekong River Basin (LMRB).
From: Variable renewable energy pathways in the Lower Mekong Basin under projected river flow extremes
This framework consists of three main parts. For part 1 (that is data preparation), we first characterize the cascade topology of all reservoirs and collect the historical daily streamflow data of the basin outlet, and then reproduce key stream statistics, such as seasonal means and variances while preserving spatial cross-correlations across reservoirs through a sets of process including the Cholesky decomposition, bootstrap resampling and percentile selection (see the section on Synthetic streamflow generation for more details), and finally generate synthetic streamflow for four representative years (2020, 2030, 2040, and 2050) across all 57 reservoirs within the LMRB under seven different climate scenarios, each comprising 100 ensemble members. For part 2 (that is model solving), we drive the Pathways for Renewable Energy Planning coupling Short-term Hydropower OperaTion (PREP-SHOT) model using the synthetic streamflow data under different climate scenarios associated with other related parameters and subsequently obtain the energy expansion pathways under different climate scenarios. For part 3 (that is scenario analysis), we compare the different outputs derived from the PREP-SHOT model and further evaluate the climate extremes’ impacts on renewable energy development within the LMRB. EPLFs and EPHFs represent extended periods of low flows and extended periods of high flows, respectively.
