The need to assess major infrastructure performance under a changing climate is widely recognized yet rarely practiced, particularly in rapidly growing African economies. Here, we consider high-stakes investments across the water, energy, and food sectors for two major river basins in a climate transition zone in Africa. We integrate detailed interpretation of observed and modeled climate-system behavior with hydrological modeling and decision-relevant performance metrics.
Global and regional trends indicate that energy demand will soon be covered by a widespread deployment of renewable energy sources. However, the weather and climate driven energy sources are characterized by a significant spatial and temporal variability. One of the commonly mentioned solutions to overcome the mismatch between demand and supply provided by renewable generation is a hybridization of two or more energy sources into a single power station (like wind-solar, solar-hydro or solar-wind-hydro).
