The Water Footprint of Hydropower Production

Dear Colleagues

Hydropower has been the main source of renewable energy for more than a century. With over 16% of global electricity generation, hydropower today remains the largest source of renewable energy in the electricity sector. Still, there is the potential to increase global hydropower generation, particularly in Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. Though hydropower is now a mature technology, there is room for technological improvements and need for adaptation to new challenges, such as new market conditions, the increasing focus on sustainability, and the role in the water–energy–food nexus. In the light of climate change, hydropower is part of the solution by offering significant potential reduction in carbon emissions, but will also be directly impacted due to potentially change in the water resources available for power production. Situated at the crossroads of two major issues for development (i.e. water and energy), hydro reservoirs can often deliver services beyond electricity supply, such as flood control, transport, recreation, water supply for irrigation, municipal consumption, and industry. In a future climate with higher water resources variability and more extremes, reservoirs are key-stones in securing the supply of water and reducing risks for flooding. There are reasons to believe that the multi-purpose use of reservoirs will rather be the rule than the exception in the future. As such, planning hydropower projects will require even more careful considerations of the interplay with other users and uses of water, making both planning and operation much more challenging than for other renewables.

We see an emerging trend to assess the sustainability performance of all types of goods and services, including electricity production. Declaration of the carbon and water footprints are becoming common, and there are ISO standards available for assessing carbon and water footprints. The last years, an increasing number of studies of the water consumption/footprint from hydropower production have been published, which show a large range of variation  in their calculated numbers. This can to some extent be explained by the lack of consensus on methodology to apply, which is accompanied by an on-going scientific debate on the "correct" methodology. For this reason, all contributions to this Special Issue on “The Water Footprint of Hydropower Production” should clearly describe the methodology applied, argue why this methodology has been selected, and discuss the impacts the water footprint/consumption have on the water resources and competing water use, as well as the benefits (in the case of large reservoir evaporation).

To summarize, in this Special Issue “The Water Footprint of Hydropower Production”, we invite authors from different scientific disciplines and traditions to contribute with papers. We would like to see papers publishing new numbers on water consumption from hydropower production, papers discussing methodological challenges and solutions to these challenges, and the use of new data sources and techniques to calculate the water footprint. We underline the need to clearly describe the applied methods, justify the selection of methods, and discuss the impacts on the water resources and use related to the water footprint, and possibly benefits of the given activity leading to high water consumption values.

Emeritus Prof. Ånund Killingtveit
Prof. Dr. Tor Haakon Bakken
Guest Editors

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• hydropower
• water
• footprint
• water
• consumption
• reservoirs
• sustainability
• multi-purpose