Strengthening Climate Resilience of 115 ENGIE Hydropower Assets

The Challenge

Macro-evaluation of the impact of climate change on hydropower generation (financial risk), dam safety (industrial risk) and the environment (environmental risk) through the assets.
Detailed analysis for a cascade of assets in the Pyrenees.

Evaluation & improvement of the methods and tools currently used to assess the impact of climate change on regular flows and extreme hydro-climatic events (storm rainfall and floods)

The Solution

Methodology to score a large set of risks for all assets and quantify the impact for hydro-climatic changes, flood safety and environmental impact.

Evaluation of methods currently used to assess the impact of climate change on storm rainfall and floods. Assessment of the reliability of using typical hydrological models for measuring flow modifications with climate change.
Development of innovative tools to address identified challenges.

The Impact

Risk scoring for threats and opportunities co-identified with the operators. Quantification of specific vulnerabilities: (i) in terms of relative change for the hydro-climatic conditions in each catchment, (ii) evaluation in economic terms for flood safety (cost of changing the spillways) and energy production.

Discarding of some methods currently used that are not adequate to be used in a climate change context. Development of new methods such as multi-hydrological modelling, dynamic weighting of calibrated hydrological models and stochastic weather generators.