Strategizing Renewable Energy Transitions to Preserve Sediment Transport Integrity

讲座简介:

Hydropower is vital for low-carbon energy systems, aiding climate mitigation. However, hydropower dams also trap sediment, a crucial resource for climate adaptation. Across the globe, the Mekong River Basin (MRB) exemplifies this mitigation-adaptation trade-off, where the quest for hydropower threatens sediment flows to the Mekong Delta, complicating trade-off decisions between ecosystem and energy objectives. Herein we present a novel multi-sectoral integrated water-sediment-energy planning framework that fully internalizes the impacts of hydropower expansion on both energy system costs and sediment supply. Our analysis indicates that current hydropower development plans could reduce sediment flows in the MRB by 40.8 Mt/yr (74%). However, strategically replacing 19 high sediment-trapping hydropower plants with solar and wind alternatives could preserve 98% of sediment supply, with only a 4~6% increase in energy system costs. Crucially, the sediment-related benefits, valued at $10.4 million/Mt/yr, nearly offset these additional costs, resulting in a marginal 1~3% overall cost increase.

主讲人简介:

Xiaogang He is an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Deputy Director of the Centre for Environmental Resilience at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Dr. He is a Princeton-trained Ph.D. Hydrologist with expertise in economics, machine learning, and environmental policy. His research interests focus on the fundamental understanding of how climate change, variability, and human interventions affect drought and flood risk across scales, and how to implement an integrative framework (e.g., Earth System Models, Integrated Assessment Models, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, multi-benefit spatial optimisation, nexus approaches) to reduce their societal impacts on the interlinked water-food-energy sectors.

Before joining NUS, Dr. He was a Water in the West Postdoc Fellow at Stanford University working on sustainable groundwater management. He has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, 2024), Nature Communications (2019), Science Advances (2021, 2022, 2024), and Nature Water (2023), all as the lead and/or corresponding author. Dr. He’s research has gained lots of media attention, including The New York Times, Associated Press, ABC News, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Straits Times, CNA, KQED, The Hill, Grist, EurekAlert!, Science Daily and many others.

Dr. He’s accomplishments have earned numerous accolades, including the Distinguished Lecture Award from the Hydrological Science Section of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS), the inaugural Outstanding Early Career Award from NUS’s College of Design and Engineering, and the College Educator Award. He currently serves as Associate Editor for Geophysical Research Letters and Journal of Hydrology, and as Associate Deputy Editor for Climatic Change.