Hydropower sector climate resilience guide

The purpose of the Hydropower Sector Climate Resilience Guide is to provide a practical and useful approach for identifying, assessing and managing climate risks to enhance the climate change resilience of new and existing hydropower projects. The guide responds to the need to provide international industry good practice on how to incorporate climate resilience into hydropower project planning, design and operations.

The guide also seeks to evolve from the default use of historical data, the assumption that hydrological variability will remain the same over the lifetime of a project and the limited knowledge of how best to access, use and interpret climate change modelling and observed climate data. The conventional approach neglects to consider the short- and long-term impacts that climate change may have on investments due to the high uncertainty inherent to actual climate change predictions. 

The guide is designed to take users through a phased approach to incorporate climate resilience into hydropower project appraisal, design, construction and/or operation, to ensure that the project is resilient. These phases are:

• Project climate risk screening
• Initial analysis
• Climate stress test
• Climate risk management
• Monitoring, evaluation and reporting

It is intended as a resource for project owners, financial institutions, governments and private developers, who will utilise the guide to make informed decisions on the development, rehabilitation and operation of hydropower projects.