The Greater Mekong's Climate-Water-Energy Nexus: How Regional Droughts Affect Electricity Trading, Production Costs, and Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Abstract
The Greater Mekong Subregion is a transnational area bound together by the Mekong River and its immense hydropower resources, historically seen as the backbone of regional economic development. The river basin is now punctuated by several dams, arguably successful in attracting both international investors and fierce criticisms for their environmental and social impacts. Surprisingly, almost no attention has been paid so far to the actual performance of these infrastructures: do the Mekong's hydropower dams supply a steady energy flow? Are they robust with respect to the inter-annual climatic variability characterizing Southeast Asia? How does their performance reflect on the CO2 emissions of the electricity sector? To answer these questions, we focus on Laos, the `battery of Asia', and Thailand, Laos' main energy customer. We develop a high-resolution, semi-distributed water-energy model to simulate both countries' electricity production and trade. Simulation results over a 30-year period show that hydro-climatic variability strongly impacts the energy generation mix. During prolonged droughts, hydropower supply decreases up to 4,000 GWh/year—roughly the annual production of the Hoover dam—requiring additional generation from coal and gas plants. In turn, this increases power production costs and CO2 emissions, which can rise up to about 250 M$ and 3 Mt per year. To put the analysis in a broader climate-water-energy context, we look for statistically significant anomalies in production occurring during El Niño events, and show that variability in Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperature influences not only regional hydro-meteorological processes, but also production costs and CO2 emissions. Banking on these results, we discuss opportunities for improving system performance, including a deeper integration of power markets that facilitates electricity exchange across Laos and Thailand.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMH148...07G
- Keywords:
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- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 6344 System operation and management;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES