Integrated mitigation and adaptation planning

Climate change is a growing concern for both the water and energy sectors. In much of the world, rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns are shrinking water supplies, affecting households and a wide range of economic activities, in irrigated agriculture, industry and electricity generation especially hydropower, as well as thermal power plants, according to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.
Those impacts are exacerbated by climate change impacts on demand for both water and energy. Farmers who long relied on rainfall to water their crops increasingly need irrigation to endure dry spells and, in some places, severe and prolonged droughts. Irrigation systems, in turn, typically require electricity to pump the water more so if groundwater is used. And while rising temperatures reduce energy demand for heating, they increase demand for cooling, straining power grids during extreme heat events, according to the Working Group III contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report
and recent reporting from the International Energy Agency. Adaptation is thus an urgent priority for both sectors. A 2024 UN report found water stress had increased in most world regions in recent years, and over 791 million people one-tenth of the global population lived in countries with high or critical water stress levels, meaning annual withdrawals exceeded 75% of renewable water resources, according to recent UN Water monitoring for SDG 6 (Water). Without adaptation, the report predicted, there will be persistent food insecurity, natural resources will degrade, and economic growth will be unsustainable.

The urgency is just as great in the energy sector. In Ecuador, for instance, historic droughts in 2022–2024 caused such a drop in hydropower generation that, starting in September 2024, daily blackouts were imposed, costing thousands of jobs and at least USD 2 billion in economic output by mid-October, according to news reports. Climate change also undermines countries’ emission reduction efforts. Studies in the US, for example, found that drought-related hydropower reductions in recent decades, particularly in western states, drove up reliance on fossil fuels, costing utilities billions of dollars and significantly increasing both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution (Qiu et al., 2023; Moghaddasi et al., 2024).
Many governments already recognize these issues, but they lack the tools to examine interconnections between water and energy resources or between climate change adaptation and mitigation. The two sectors are usually overseen by separate government agencies, which use separate analytical tools and develop plans in isolation. As a result, they miss critical risks and trade-offs. This brief shows how two
widely used sectoral planning tools developed by SEI can combine to bridge this gap, providing actionable insights that decision-makers can use to optimize energy and water supply systems for more climate-resilient economic growth.

source:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sustainableeating-carbonfootprint-climateaction-share-7401577287831470081-X7Dh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAtGGkQBsxwMBmX3lEJO8btihnfBCaHqTz4