Phase two:
Current work
We are currently busy with three key workstreams for Riverscope, which will expand and further demonstrate Riverscope’s use case.
We want to better integrate climate risk into the Riverscope assessment process. This enhancement will help stakeholders understand and grapple with their exposure to climate-related physical, transition and litigation risk.
Hydropower assets are directly exposed to serious physical climate risks, from prolonged drought conditions that undermine energy production, to threats of dam safety associated with extreme floods. For people and countries that depend on dams, these climate impacts create significant risks, including severe energy shortage and persistent food crises.
Our analysis will pick out areas that are particularly exposed to climate risk due to reliance on hydropower, showing how backers of dams in these areas are exposed to financial and legal risks. We will also model the macro-level impacts that we could see in some of these locations.
Factoring climate risk in at an early stage in hydropower planning and development processes supports more sustainable energy development. It can also help developers to see the connections between future social and environmental risks.
Portfolio analyses
We are conducting several analyzes of hydropower portfolios, starting with a prominent hydropower developer. These investigations pick out and rank around fifteen assets that can be connected directly to developers or financial backers.
Our portfolio analyses demonstrate Riverscope’s value in providing rapid and meaningful insights at not only a project-level, but also within and across portfolios. They will provide the basis for quantitative and clear benchmarking and comparison processes, both within and between organizations.
Area Analyses
We are working on two area analyses of significance. The first is a Mekong regional assessment that will rank the exposure of all planned hydropower assets on the Lower Mekong mainstream, in addition to select hydropower assets in Laos and Cambodia, some of the most hydropower-reliant countries in the region.
We will then pick out key issues for further qualitative analysis, such as Laos’ reliance on hydropower for energy exports and alternative technologies that could limit its environmental, social and climate exposure.
The second analysis is a more detailed energy assessment of Namibia, which to some surprise, has plans to develop a second large hydropower project in the coming decade. We will model a least cost energy pathway for Namibia and compare this with current energy plans to determine whether development of the planned hydropower project makes sense.
We will complement this with a Riverscope assessment to better understand how a risk-adjusted cost estimate of the planned project compares to alternative energy technologies, in addition to a broader cost-benefit analysis of hydropower versus alternatives.
These two area assessments will demonstrate the value of Riverscope in supporting a bespoke set of insights for a wide range of stakeholders at a local, national and regional level. Please reach out to us if you are interested in finding out more, or if you are interested in a partnership or consulting service.
