Planning with emission models to reduce the carbon footprint of the new reservoirs

Reservoirs collectively contribute 1-2% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, although individual emissions can vary widely. While emission models have considerably advanced our understanding of the lifetime carbon impacts of reservoirs globally and offer means to inform judicious planning, their widespread adoption is hindered by high manual processing requirements, uncertainties, and linkages to geospatial drivers that can be obscure for planners. Meanwhile, simpler Tier 1 methods fail to capture variability across individual reservoirs and can overestimate national emissions by 50% compared to model-based estimates. In this study, an automated framework for reservoir emission assessment and planning is used to address some of these limitations. By applying a spatially explicit emission model enhanced with human-focused explanations to strategic hydropower expansion planning in Myanmar, we demonstrate how emission models can be used to inform low carbon reservoir planning at a national scale.