Analysing hydropower production in stressed river basins within the SEEA-W approach: the Jucar River case

Abstract

Hydropower generation represents an important contribution to meeting the challenges of today's increasing world energy needs. It uses about 44% of water in Europe, and it is the main user of water in most OECD countries. However, in most cases, the energy sector is not a water consumer. The largest part of these withdrawals is immediately returned into the environment, being able to be used by other sectors, which is its most prominent characteristic. In order to understand the water-energy nexus and the challenges that the environment and other water users face, the European Commission proposed the use of water accounts in order to measure the influence of each water user, infrastructure and management decision to the total economic value of water resources in a given basin. In this sense, the SEEA-W is the most well-known approach of hybrid accounting as it provides a standard approach to compare results between different regions. This research analyses hydropower production in the Jucar River Basin (Spain), which is currently water-stressed by consumptive demands, within the SEEA-W approach. The results demonstrate that the SEEA-W approach needs some improvement in order to represent hydropower production properly.