Modeling Net Land Occupation of Hydropower Reservoirs in Norway for Use in Life Cycle Assessment

Increasing hydropower electricity
production constitutes a unique
opportunity to mitigate climate change impacts. However, hydropower
electricity production also impacts aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity
through freshwater habitat alteration, water quality degradation,
and land use and land use change (LULUC). Today, no operational model
exists that covers any of these cause-effect pathways within life
cycle assessment (LCA). This paper contributes to the assessment of
LULUC impacts of hydropower electricity production in Norway in LCA.
We quantified the inundated land area associated with 107 hydropower
reservoirs with remote sensing data and related it to yearly electricity
production. Therewith, we calculated an average net land occupation
of 0.027 m2·yr/kWh of Norwegian storage hydropower
plants for the life cycle inventory. Further, we calculated an adjusted
average land occupation of 0.007 m2·yr/kWh, accounting
for an underestimation of water area in the performed maximum likelihood
classification. The calculated land occupation values are the basis
to support the development of methods for assessing the land occupation
impacts of hydropower on biodiversity in LCA at a damage level.