Water availability and energy production: is the transition at risk?

The document illustrates the relationships between available water resources and the energy sector, highlighting the impact that the drought recorded last year in Italy is having on the production of electricity and, ultimately, on the environmental transition process.

Read the report’s key messages and download the document for further information.

• Climate change is making water flows more erratic and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
• The interplay of such contrasting phenomena, such as  snowfall at an all-time low at the beginning of 2023 and the recent flooding in Emilia-Romagna, is the most obvious feature of climate change.
• 2022 has already been the hottest and driest year of the last 2 centuries and has seen a marked acceleration in extreme weather events with consequences on the availability of the water needed for various uses.
• Due to its dependence on the availability of water resources, the energy sector is particularly vulnerable, a situation that highlights particular critical issues concerning:
  • the reliability of the grid, affected by a lower production of hydroelectric energy and the potential suspension of part of the thermoelectric production;
  • the transition process, which requires the development of some especially water-intensive low-carbon technologies.
• Additional uncertainty concerns the energy consumption that may be required to promote alternative solutions to water scarcity: for instance, the technologies for desalination and purification for reuse that are currently available require high energy usage.
• In Italy, the impact on energy production was particularly significant in 2022, a terrible year for hydroelectric production, as the contribution to national electricity generation dropped from 15-20% to 10% in recent years, the lowest rate since the 1950s.
• As the primary source of renewable electricity, hydroelectric energy plays a strategic role, benefitting both the electricity grid and the transition process, as it is a resource that can offer security and flexibility to the former while also promoting the integration of other renewables pertinent to the latter.
• The National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC) – currently awaiting approval – could become an important tool for reducing the risks of climate change and improving the adaptive capacity of socio-economic and natural systems
• With regard to the storage of water resources, it is necessary to increase the volumes of reservoirs, facilitating, for example, interventions to reduce the silting of dams caused by the accumulation of material sediments in the hydrographic basin, which are carried by the rivers that flow into reservoirs.
• Moreover, maintenance and modernisation interventions are needed to improve the production output of existing plants, even in the case of lower availability of water resources – and to achieve this, it is necessary to create the right conditions that will unlock the necessary investments.