Strategic Energy Planning 

Strategic energy planning should look at a range of potential energy technologies alongside other energy management approaches, including demand management, to narrow down which are potential energy need solutions. 

At the earliest stages, strategic energy planning should seek to identify if hydropower is an eligible technology, and if so, what suites of locations could potentially deliver desired energy services whilst minimising cumulative Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impacts. 

Where there are suitable conditions, hydropower should be considered as part of strategic energy planning due to its renewable nature, ability to provide reliable baseload power, and potential for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuel alternatives. Hydropower is a good complement to wind and solar energy because it offers reliable, dispatchable power generation that can compensate for the intermittency of wind and solar resources, thus enhancing grid stability and energy reliability. 

Increasingly there is recognition that historical approaches focused on project-level options are far less efficient and cost-effective than broader regional analyses, particularly from a sustainable river basin perspective where hydropower is amongst the options. Further information on strategic hydropower planning can be found at Almeida, R.M. et al (2022) “Strategic planning of hydropower development: balancing benefits and socioenvironmental costs”. 

Whilst HydroSelect is not designed to provide guidance on strategic energy planning, the considerations it includes may be incorporated, as feasible, into broader strategic energy and hydropower planning frameworks. Hydropower strategic planning has benefited greatly from advances in computational capacities and data availability and is ideally a precursor to and consistent with HydroSelect application. Tools that inform strategic hydropower planning and master plans increasingly include Strategic Environmental and Social Assessments, whole-of-river basin planning and optimisation, and ‘Hydropower by Design’.