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Low head Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS) has been considered an opportunity for energy storage since the rise of wind and solar energy development in Europe. The study of environmental aspects (siting, fish friendliness, and land use) therefore plays an important role in the ALPHEUS project (Augmenting Grid Stability Through Low Head Pumped Hydro Energy Utilization and Storage), which is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. The principal aim of the project is to improve reversible pump/turbine (RPT) technology to make pumped hydro storage economically viable in coastal environments. Within the project, one of the objectives is to evaluate the impacts on the coastal marine environments of a low head pump hydro device at a preliminary level. The area designated for the implementation of the prototype test site is in the North Sea. The project will evaluate a variety of measures to either prevent fish from entering machinery or maximize the survival rate of fish passage.This study is part of the ALPHEUS activities that investigate environmental aspects, and, focuses on the production of a protocol for PHS with the identification of the characteristic elements of each test site as part of the application of the MSFD (Marine Strategy Framework Directives) principles. It is, therefore, possible to evaluate in advance which environmental components are potentially affected by seawater PHS devices. The descriptors that are affected by PHS interactions are D1, D3, D6, D8, D11. D1 and D3 descriptors are focused on biodiversity and on commercial fish health, for this reason, an in-depth study of the effects on fish is required. Considering this, it is applied an innovative methodology for the assessment of potential impacts, injuries, and mortality rates on selected fish species. Fish friendlessness is estimated using software called Biological Performance Assessment (BioPA) that assimilates hydraulic field data, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results, and laboratory fish-injury studies. This tool gives the probabilities that fish will encounter hazardous conditions during passage through specific regions of the turbines and the impacts induced by hydrodynamic stressors.

The population growth and the economic development that the five Countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) located in La Plata Basin (LPB) have gone through over the last decades have risen the necessity to assess the current and future electricity demand and compare it to the energy production. In this region, the water resources of LPB are one of the most important sources of energy. In this context, the CLARIS EU (European Union) FP7 project has carried out an extensive research work which, in terms of investigating hydropower potential and vulnerability, has produced the following outcomes: assessment of current hydropower production and electricity demand; calculation of the maximum potential hydropower in order to establish whether and when shortage in terms of hydropower generation is to be expected; analysis of potential residual hydropower taking into account future user demands and analysis of hydropower production taking into account climate change scenarios, in order to iden...

Population growth, economic development, urbanization, changes in hydrological regimes and land use are the main drivers affecting allocation and exploitation of water resources. The pressure exerted by these global changes on the five countries -Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay- located in La Plata Basin over the last decades has raised the need for assessing trends in future electricity demand and energy production in the basin. The aim of this research is to assess whether (and when) shortage and vulnerabilities in terms of hydropower generation are to be expected in La Plata basin in the next decades. The methodology proposed has focused on two aspects to reach the objectives: 1) assessment of hydropower production and electricity demand in the basin over the last twenty years (1987–2008), in order to establish growing trends for the next thirty years; 2) computation of maximum potential hydropower using the newly developed Arc-GIS based tool VAPIDRO-ASTE. The assessment and calculation have been applied to La Plata River and its main tributaries: Paranaiba, Grande River, Tiete, Paranapanema, Iguacu, Uruguay, Negro River, Paraguay and Parana. The first outcomes of this research show that La Plata Basin has high hydropower potential. About 40% of the hydropower potential is already used to produce and supply energy. Out of the remaining 60% potential, about 25% could hardly be exploited because of environmental issues or low cost/benefit ratio. Thus, the estimated residual potential hydropower is about 35% of the maximum potential hydropower calculated.

La Plata Basin is shared by five countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), which have fast growing economies in South America. These countries need energy for their sustainable development; hence, hydropower can play a very important role as a renewable clean source of energy. This paper presents an analysis of the current hydropower production and electricity demand in La Plata Basin (LPB), and it analyses the maximum and residual hydropower potential of the basin for a horizon of 30 yr (i.e. year 2040). Current hydropower production is estimated based on historical available data, while future energy production is deduced from the available water in the catchment (estimated based on measured hydrographs of the past years), whereas electricity demand is assessed by correlating existing electricity demand with the estimated population growth and economic development. The maximum and residual hydropower potential of the basin were assessed for the mean annual flows of the present hydrological regime (1970–2000) and topographical characteristics of the area. Computations were performed using an integrated GIS environment called VAPIDRO-ASTE released by the Research on Energy System (Italy). The residual hydropower potential of the basin is computed considering first that the water supply needs for population, industry and agriculture are served, and then hydropower energy is produced. The calculated hydropower production is found to be approximately half of the estimated electricity demand, which shows that there is a need to look for other sources of energy in the future.

This is the accepted manuscript of the paper " Where is the best site for wave energy exploitation? Case study along the coast of northern Latium (ITALY)", published as final paper in "J Coast Conserv20,13–29 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11852-015-0414-8" Paladini de Mendoza, F., Bonamano, S., Stella, G.et al.Where is the best site for wave energy exploitation? Case study along the coast of northern Latium (ITALY).J Coast Conserv20,13–29 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11852-015-0414-8 The present work proposes a siting process for the detection of a suitable site for wave energy exploitation. The choice of a suitable site is based on the good agreement between energy availability, environmental sustainability, and equipped facilities to exploit wave energy. The case study in the northern Latium coast is explicative because in this area there are several activities that affect marine ecosystems, and the introduction of renewable energies promote the reduction of anthropic pressures. The nearshore wave power is studied through the numerical wave model (CMS-Wave), and available wave buoys along the coast were used to compare numerical results. In correspondence with Civitavecchia harbour, the largest nearshore wave energy was found; the large depth in front of the breakwater allows to conserve a great part of offshore wave power, with an average dissipation rate of 10% less than offshore, with mean annual available wave energy of 25.4MWh/m and seasonal fluctuation of 5.4MWh/m. This area appears to be an optimal site for nearshore and shoreline wave energy device tests and installations, for energy availability (intermediate level respect Mediterreanean Sea), low potential environmental impact, easier accessibility, and policy oriented towards a larger sustainability of harbour activities.

A distributed model for the simulation of the water budget and prediction of the sediment yield in Alpine catchments is presented. The strongly variable landscape typical of Alpine regions was schematically represented through a raster of square cells. The hydrological phenomena were modelled at this cell scale. A well-gauged Alpine catchment was selected to validate the model. A catchment digital terrain model (DTM) was created through an automatic treatment of the catchment contour lines, selected stream lines, and soil and vegetation cover maps. Water and sediment routing to the catchment outlet was performed by integrating simplified versions of the equations of continuity and motion for both water and sediment. The governing equations were integrated and calibrated on a monthly time scale by using available field data on rainfall, discharge and sediment yield at the catchment outlet. The numerical simulations showed that the proposed mathematical model was able to adequately simulate the water and sediment budgets of the test catchment on a yearly and a monthly scale. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.