Climate change

Hydropower generates low-carbon power, and provides essential climate adaptation services to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events such as floods and drought.

Although characterised by their longevity, hydropower plants in some areas will need to strengthen their resilience to climate change to ensure operations are not compromised in the long term.

The precise greenhouse gas footprint of a reservoir can vary depending on a range of conditions. Trusted tools are required to measure GHG emissions and give confidence to communities, investors and governments about a hydropower project’s low carbon profile.

Our action

IHA is supporting hydropower to both become more resilient to climate change and to be more widely recognised as a low carbon form of energy.

We launched IHA’s Hydropower Sector Climate Resilience Guide to support owners, developers and investors to plan, build, upgrade and operate facilities in the face of variable climatic and hydrological conditions.

We continue to offer training and validation services for the GHG Reservoir (G-res) Tool for reporting on the carbon footprint of a reservoir. Developed in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair for Global Environmental Change, the tool provides a cost-effective way to more accurately assess net greenhouse gas emissions.