The transition to a low-carbon economy will require the development of innovative methods to integrate renewable sources of energy while minimizing the additional pressure on closely connected ecosystems.

Hydropower is a mature and cost-competitive renewable energy source, which helps stabilize fluctuations between energy demand and supply. Depending on the relative capacities of the intermittent renewables and hydropower facilities, integration may require changes in the way hydropower facilities operate to provide balancing, reserves or energy storage. Moreover, non-power constraints on the hydropower system, such as irrigation water deliveries, environmental constraints, recreation, flood control and variable social acceptance tend to reduce the ability of hydropower to integrate variable renewable.

This session solicits contributions that describe, characterize, or model distributed renewable energy sources at different spatial and temporal scales that are relevant for planning and management of electricity systems. Special attention will be devoted to the interactions between the energy-water system and the climate and hydrological variables that govern production in space and time. Of particular interest are case studies and other contributions of hydrology and power grid modernization initiatives to understand these complex interdependencies. The development of new modeling approaches to analyze interactions with climate-policy and power grid management options, socio-economic mitigation measures and land use are welcome.

Questions of interest include:
- How to predict water availability for hydropower production?
- How to predict and quantify the space-time dependences and the positive/negative feedbacks between wind/solar energies, water cycle and hydropower?
- How do energy, land use and water supply interact during transitions?
- What policy requirements or climate strategies are needed to manage and mitigate risks in the transition?
- Quantification of energy production impacts on ecosystems such as hydropeaking effects on natural flow regimes.

This session has the support of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) that established the joint program “Hydropower” to facilitate research, promote hydropower and enable sustainable electricity production. Further information can be found here:
https://www.eera-set.eu/eera-joint-programmes-jps/list-of-jps/hydropower/