Title

Hydropower licensing and climate change: Insights from cooperative game theory

Authors

Authors

K. Madani

Comments

Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

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

Share

COinS