Assessing Climate Change Trends within the Sondu Miriu River Basin and Impacts on Hydropower Ge¬neration, Kenya

Abstract

Climate change is the expected outcome of increases in atmospheric concentrations of "greenhouse” gases resulting from human activities. Energy has been identified as one of those sectors that contribute more towards GHGs emissions while renewable energy technologies have the potential to mitigate GHGs emissions. Among all the renewable energy technologies being utilized, hydropower stands out to be the most stable and proven technology over time compared to the others. Despite hydropower having the potential to mitigate climate change impacts and support some adaptation strategies, it is also likely to be impacted on by climate change.

This paper, presents findings of the climate change trends within the Sondu Miriu River basin and evaluating the impacts on the hydropower generation. It involves downscaling of the global scale climate change scenarios to the local scale to be able to determine the existing and projected trends.

The analysis has demonstrated that the rainfall received in the last thirty years have displayed upward trends. This confirms the climate change scenarios that have been projected by the IPCC for this region. The impact of increased rainfall has impacted positively on average hydropower energy output that has indicated upward trends for the two existing hydropower plants.