. Some of these will require big dams, which can have major negative environmental impacts. Another looming problem with hydropower is that theWe are a team of environmental and energy systems researchers. Energy systems is the study of how energy can be produced to meet the demand of the different sectors of society. Environmental systems modelling is used to simulate the natural environment and evaluate the impacts of infrastructure on it.
What also needs to be considered is that reducing the impact of droughts on energy systems requires overbuilding infrastructure. This means more energy infrastructure than needed on average is required to be reliable against extreme droughts. An overall increased annual investment in new power plants of 1.8% to 4% will be needed across the continent.
in the world - those that are longer than 500km and which flow in an uninterrupted way to the sea - 156 are located in Africa. Dams disturb this by. This means that African rivers are valuable hubs of connected river habitats. If all the planned African hydropower projects were built, we estimate that average river fragmentation could rise to 42%, potentially leading to large biodiversity loss.
Hydropower is vulnerable to climate change: as droughts kick in and water runs out, hydropower won't be as available or as cost effective. Looking at the whole energy system,has found that the availability of hydro, combined with solar and wind power decreasing in cost, means that about 32% to 60% of the proposed hydropower projects are. Building new solar and wind renewable systems comes with an overall lower energy system cost than building all proposed hydropower projects.