The importance of hydropower, traditionally one of the main sources of electricity in Africa, will decline rapidly and it will give way to solar energy, says a new study published on Thursday in the prestigious Nature journal.
The appeal of new hydropower plants is fading fast, due to the growing economic competitiveness of solar panels and the increasingly uncertain effects of climate change on river flows, according to the study, authored by two Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB, professors.
The majority of new dams proposed in Africa are therefore unlikely to ever see the light of day, VUB Professors Sebastian Sterl and Wim Thiery note.
The study shows that building hundreds of new hydroelectric dams across Africa could be a bad idea.
The authors use a detailed energy model to examine which combination of electricity sources would be most cost-effective for African countries to meet growing demand by 2050. Hydropower was compared with solar, wind, coal, gas, nuclear and other energy sources. The study looked separately at each possible future hydropower plant in Africa, each with its own storage capacity, river flow profile and interaction with other dams.
The effects of prolonged droughts on hydropower, which are likely to worsen with climate change, would need to be offset by additional investment. “This is an additional reason why solar power will become the most attractive technology in the long term,” says Professor Wim Thiery, a climatologist at VUB.
The researchers believe, however, that the game is “not quite over” for hydropower, only in the short term.
