Skarn Decarbonisation Briefing
Droughts and Power Cuts:
When Clean Energy Becomes a Liability
Wednesday 26th November 2025, 4.00pm - 4.30pm GMT
We invite you to join us for our next webinar with Carlos Calderaro, LATAM Hydropower Lead at Stantec. Carlos is an electro-mechanical engineer with 30 years of experience in hydropower projects with a focus on hydraulic turbine mechanical design and equipment.
In the last edition of the Skarn Decarbonisation Quarterly, one of the focus pieces was on the exposure to hydropower for key copper producing countries – namely, Zambia, DRC, Chile and Peru.
The past few years have been particularly challenging for these countries where severe droughts have caused shortages in hydropower generation capabilities. Hydropower plants may still be asked to operate under sub-optimal water levels to meet the society’s needs to electricity, but this can result in damages to equipment and subsequently to unplanned maintenance activities.
When hydropower plants are taken offline for planned or unplanned maintenance activities, the facilities can be inactive for several months. Lead times for equipment can be long, and disassembly of the large components must be planned and executed with care. The net result is that marginal cost of power production rises, as power is generated from other, often more expensive sources.
In the webinar we will discuss:
♦ What happens to a hydropower plant when water levels are low?
♦ Is climate change impacting how hydropower projects are assessed and executed?
Please register below to join us for this session:
About Us
Skarn Associates is the market leader in quantifying and benchmarking asset-level greenhouse gas emissions, energy intensity, and water use across the mining sector.