SUSTAINDAM — Hydropower and Climate Change in West Africa

Akosombo and Kpong carry a large share of Ghana’s generation, which makes their climate sensitivity a national question rather than a plant-level one. A Random Forest model was developed and implemented using lagged precipitation together with minimum and maximum temperature as predictors, to analyse energy generation at both plants.

The analysis assessed the historical evolution of water-related activity around the dams and the sensitivity of each plant to climate variability, integrating land use and land cover change dynamics so that catchment transformation was treated as a driver rather than background.

Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) analyses were then built and land-use trend scenarios proposed within the water–energy–food nexus. Combining top-down scenario forcing with bottom-up observed behaviour gave a planning basis that holds under compounded climate and land-use uncertainty rather than under one of them at a time.