Effect on future hydropower potential from use of different bias correction methods for three Swedish river basins

Hydropower is responsible for approximately 45 % of the Swedish annual electricity production making it an important constituent of the Swedish energy market. This master thesis serves to evaluate how the use of three different bias correction methods and the delta change approach effect the predicted future hydropower production in Lule, Skellefte and Dal river basin. The study includes one global emission scenario, A1B, two global climate models (GCMs), ECHAM5 and HADCM3, and one regional climate model (RCM), RCA3. The Thomson Reuters Point Carbon in-house HBV energy model was used to evaluate the results. Results indicated an increase in both precipitation and inflow to the hydropower systems in the future. Spring inflow (week 16-28) increased in Lule and decreased in Skellefte and Dal. For all river basins the majority of the increase was distributer during August – March. Results also indicate earlier arrival of the spring flood in the future and spring peak inflow that remain constant for Lule and Skellefte and decrease for Dal. Temperature increases between 2.5-4.7 degrees. It was concluded that the choice of bias correction method had great impact on the end result. Overall quantile mapping performed best and would be our recommendation for any application that did not focus solely on the mean changes. If only the mean changes in amount of precipitation was of interest delta change would be the best choice due to its simplicity.