Our work
Open Hydro is an analysis and advisory international organisation with deep expertise in climate change and policy in the hydropower sector.
Data analysis
We live in a time of climate emergency where hydropower assets have an unprecedented role in addressing the global challenges we face, including water and energy access. Without reliable climate-related information and commonly agreed metrics that consider both water and energy services provided, hydropower projects risk continuing to struggle to demonstrate their role and contribution to tackle climate change and attract the necessary climate finance support.
Open Hydro provides the knowledge, data and analysis to answer the most pressing issues within climate finance in the hydropower sector.
Advisory services
Our purpose at Open Hydro is building a climate resilient planet. Information about how exposed projects and businesses are to physical and transitional climate risks and how they contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change is fundamental for a just energy transition. The dual relationship of hydropower with climate, particularly with projects with significant storage, represent the potential complexity of conflicts and trade-offs between adaptation and mitigation outcomes of a hydropower project.
Open Hydro provides advisory services to government bodies, energy companies and international organisations in their pursuit of their global ambitions of the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience, helping accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Net Zero Climate Resilient Hydropower Initiative
Open Hydro has formed the Net Zero Climate Resilient Hydropower Initiative to accelerate climate change action and mobilise investment to finance or refinance new and existing hydropower assets. Open Hydro welcomes support from all type of organisations in the hydropower sector.
The Net Zero Climate Resilient Hydropower is a multi-stakeholder initiative to promote a commonly agreed standardised climate-related reporting for hydropower assets.
Enables hydropower assets to inform on the financial impacts of their climate-related risks and opportunities at the project level.
Provides recommendations and guidance to assist asset’s owners and operators in defining their roadmap to demonstrate their contributions to climate action.
Aligns the corporate-level Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations to the project level.
The initiative aims to advance the availability and quality of climate-related information disclosure, with a focus on climate mitigation, resilience and adaptation.
Climate mitigation
On the one hand, as the most critical renewable and clean energy resource, hydropower contributes significantly to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and mitigating global warming.
However, hydropower projects are site-specific. Therefore, the emissions intensity, the main emission pathway, the dominant form in which they occur (CH4 or CO2), and their evolution through time will depend on the particular climatic, geographic, edaphic and hydrologic settings of the reservoir and its catchment.
Climate resilience
While hydropower infrastructure has a fundamental role in climate change mitigation and adaptation, planning hydropower projects from a climate-resilient perspective is vital. Project developers, owners and operators need to ensure that physical climate change risks do not compromise the project from the dependency on hydrological regimes and exposure to natural disasters.
Hydropower resilience to climate change will be vital to enable greenfield projects and the evaluation of existing plants.
Climate adaptation
Many of the adaptation services that hydropower provides on water resources, acting as a storage buffer against drought and flood control, and energy systems are not yet fully recognised nor adequately remunerated.
With acknowledgement of the transitional opportunities and demonstration of the adaptation services provided, policy and regulators can incentivise investment in hydropower development, financing in infrastructure modifications or operational aspects or adequate remunerations.