Hydropower licensing and climate change: Insights from cooperative game theory

    Authors

    K. Madani

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Adv. Water Resour.

    Keywords

    FERC; Licensing; Cooperative game theory; Conflict resolution; Hydropower; Climate change; WATER-RESOURCES; Water Resources

    Abstract

    Cooperative game theory solutions can provide useful insights into how parties may use water and environmental resources and share any benefits of cooperation. Here, a method based on Nash and Nash-Harsanyi bargaining solutions is developed to explore the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) relicensing process, in which owners of non-federal hydropower projects in the United States have to negotiate their allowable operations, with other interest groups (mainly environmental). Linkage of games to expand the feasible solution range and the "strategic loss" concept are discussed and a FERC relicensing bargaining model is developed for studying the bargaining stage (third stage) of the relicensing process. Based on the suggested solution method, how the lack of incentive for cooperation results in long delay in FERC relicensing in practice is explained. Further, potential effects of climate change on the FERC relicensing are presented and how climate change may provide an incentive for cooperation among the parties to hasten the relicensing is discussed. An "adaptive FERC license" framework is proposed, based on cooperative game theory, to improve the performance and adaptability of the system to future changes with no cost to the FERC, in face of uncertainty about future hydrological and ecological conditions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Advances in Water Resources

    Volume

    34

    Issue/Number

    2

    Publication Date

    1-1-2011

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    174

    Last Page

    183

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000287424400002

    ISSN

    0309-1708

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