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The study presented in this report assessed the climate impacts on 64 hydropower plants in 13 African countries between 2020 and 2099, comparing the results with the values of the baseline period from 2010 to 2019.

The geographical scope of the assessment covers Nile basin countries (Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda), Congo and Zambezi basin countries (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe), a North African country (Morocco) and a West African country (Ghana). The assessment includes over 18 000 MW of installed hydropower capacity in total, accounting for 80% of the total installed hydropower capacity of the 13 African countries, and around 50% of the entire region. About 83% of selected hydropower plants are impoundment facilities with reservoirs. The other 17% are mostly diversion (run-of-river) facilities and one pumped hydropower storage. Each hydropower plant assesed in the study has a different level of capacity factors during the baseline period, depending on its location, size, type and other conditions. To present an integrated analysis of climate impacts on different hydropower plants, the study uses only relative values (% of changes compared to the baseline).

High-resolution (15’’x15’’) global monthly discharge maps are developed by combining low-resolution (0.5˚x 0.5˚) monthly runoff data from each ensemble of General Circulation Models (GCM), Global Hydrological Models (GHM) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) with high-resolution (15’’x 15’’) area accumulation and drainage direction maps available from the the HydroSHEDS project (ISIMIP, Database; Gernaat et al., 2017; Lehner et al., 2008), and a low-resolution (0.5˚ x 0.5 ˚) map of monthly runoff.

The discharge maps were used to extract the design discharge and design load factors per hydropower plant (Gernaat, 2019). By ordering the discharge of a selected hydropower plant from the lowest to the highest month of discharge, a flow duration curve was generated. The value of the fourth-highest discharge month is called the design discharge and determines turbine capacity. The capacity factor is, by design, 100% for the four wettest months and less than 100% for the remaining eight drier months. Further information on the selected models and methodology is described below in this Annex. The assessment examined 40 different combinations of GCM, GHM and RCP to ensure the reliability of results and minimise potential distortions by outliers. The results of the assessment present the mean annual and monthly capacity factors of these various ensembles. 

General Circulation Models (GCM)

GFDL-ESM2M was developed by scientists at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory to make projections of the behaviour of the atmosphere, the oceans and climate, using super-computer and data storage resources. The Laboratory has contributed to each assessment of the IPCC since 1990.

HadGEM2 stands for the Hadley Centre Global Environment Model version 2. The HadGEM2 family of models includes a coupled atmosphere-ocean configuration, with or without a vertical extension in the atmosphere to include a well-resolved stratosphere, and an Earth-System configuration which includes dynamic vegetation, ocean biology and atmospheric chemistry. Members of the HadGEM2 family were used in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

IPSL-CM5 model is a full earth system model and the last version of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) which is a consortium of nine research laboratories on climate and the global environment. Based on a physical atmosphere-land-ocean-sea ice model, it also includes a representation of the carbon cycle, the stratospheric chemistry and the tropospheric chemistry with aerosols. The IPSL-CM5 model contributed to the modelling for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.

MIROC-ESM was developed by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (The University of Tokyo), and National Institute for Environmental Studies.

NorESM1 is the first version of the Norwegian earth system model. It has been applied with medium spatial resolution to provide results for the modelling for IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. It provides complementary results to the evaluation of possible anthropogenic climate change.

Global Hydrological Models (GHM)

H08 is a grid-cell based global hydrological model developed by the National Institute for Environmental Studies of Japan. It consists of six sub-models, namely land surface hydrology, river routing, reservoir operation, crop growth, environmental flow and water abstraction.

LPJmL is a dynamic global vegetation model with managed land use and river routing. It is managed by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. It is designed to simulate vegetation composition and distribution as well as stocks and land-atmosphere exchange flows of carbon and water, for both natural and agricultural ecosystems.

MPI-HM is a global hydrological model developed by the Max Planck Institute to investigate hydrological research questions mostly related to high resolution river routing. While hydrological processes are implemented in similar complexity as in full land surface models, the MPI-HM does not compute any energy-related fluxes.

PCR-GLOBWB is a grid-based global hydrology and water resources model developed at Utrecht University. The computational grid covers all continents except Greenland and Antarctica. It simulates moisture storage in two vertically stacked upper soil layers, as well as the water exchange between the soil, the atmosphere and the underlying groundwater reservoir. The exchange with the atmosphere comprises precipitation, evaporation from soils, open water, snow and soils and plant transpiration, while the model also simulates snow accumulation, snowmelt and glacier melt.

Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP)

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report defines RCPs as scenarios that include time series of emissions and concentrations of the full suite of GHGs and aerosols and chemically active gases, as well as land use/land cover (Moss et al., 2008). The word representative signifies that each RCP provides only one of many possible scenarios that leads to the specific radiative forcing characteristics. In the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, four RCPs are presented: RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, RCP 6.0 and RCP 8.5. The RCPs show various representative GHG concentration trajectories and the impact of each level of GHG concentration on the future climate.

This report analyses climate impacts on African hydropower based on two RCPs: RCP 2.6 and RCP 6.0.

The Below 2°C scenario is based on the projections of the RCP 2.6 which assumes a radiative forcing value of around 2.6 W/m2 in the year of 2100. Under the RCP 2.6 the rise in global annual mean temperature stays below 2°C compared to pre-industrial times (1850-1900) by 2100. For the period of 2080-2100, the global annual mean temperature increases by 1.6(±0.4) °C above the level of 1850-1900. The RCP 2.6 assumes an early peak in global GHG emission trends followed by a drastic decline.

The Around 3°C scenario follows the trajectory of the RCP 6.0 which assumes a radiative forcing value of around 6.0 W/m2 in the year of 2100. The RCP 6.0 is associated with a rise of 2.8(±0.5) °C in global annual mean temperature for the period of 2080-2100 compared to the pre-industrial level. The RCP 6.0 is based on the assumption of stabilisation of total radiative forcing after 2100. Under the scenario global GHG emission would peak during the latter half of the century and then decline.