Hydropower Climate Change Assessment

Hydropower has long been the nation’s largest source of renewable electricity and a key contributor to the reliability of the U.S power grid. The SECURE Water Act of 2009 requested that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) assess the effects of, and risks from, global climate change associated with water supplies for federal hydroelectric power generation and marketing practice. In 2013, in coordination with DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, WPTO oversaw the development and release of a report focused on the relationship between climate and hydropower. Referred to as the "9505 Assessment," this report included an analysis of the sensitivity of federal hydropower operations to climate variables, a climate modeling analysis that projected climate conditions and impacts to hydropower into the future, and a literature review of other related climate studies for comparison to the 9505 modeling results. Since then, WPTO has released two updates to this report, including an updated third assessment in 2022, examining the potential effects of climate change on water available for hydropower at federal facilities.

Hydropower Climate Change Assessment

Third Assessment

Second Assessment

First Assessment