The hydropower potential in the upper Indus basin under historical hydro-climatology was prepared using the Hydropower Potential Exploration (HyPE) model. Under historical hydro-climatology, the HyPE model was run to explore theoretical potential followed by technical, financial and sustainable potential under two types of hydropower development policy scenarios. The energy focus scenarios (Large/Medium/Mixed) explored the impact of different scales of hydropower development. Additionally, for sustainable potential, the geo-hazard risk representation scenarios (Risk-averse/Cost-based/Multi-hazard) evaluated three ways to represent geo-hazard risk in hydropower development policies. Furthermore, historical analysis quantified technical, financial and sustainable potential under full and remaining cases. This dataset was produced under WorkPackage 2 of the SustainIndus project.

This database was compiled under WP-2 of the SustainIndus project between August 2019 and August 2021 to consolidate publicly available information on hydropower projects in various stages of development in the upper Indus basin in national and global datasets. The database is developed with the objective of quantifying and characterizing the visualised hydropower potential which is defined as the total potential of existing and future hydropower plants that are have been envisioned in publicly available national documents. Future hydropower plants entail plants that may be under construction, planned plants in other stages of development or raw plants that have been shortlisted by government studies but may not have clarity on if and when they will materialize. The effort manually validated the quality of four parameters: geo-reference (latitude-longitude), development status, plant capacity and annual energy generation. Many other plant parameters found in the review have also been consolidated for future use here.

The hydropower potential in the upper Indus basin under future hydro-climatology was prepared using the Hydropower Potential Exploration (HyPE) as part of Work Package 2 in the SustainIndus project. Under future hydro-climatology, the HyPE model was run to explore theoretical potential followed by technical, financial and sustainable potential under policy assumptions for the mixed energy focus scenarios and risk-averse geo-hazard risk representation. In total, 72 future scenarios are considered combining CMIP6 model ensembles for 2 future time horizons (Mid: 2036-2065, Far: 2066-2095), 3 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5, 7.0 and 8.5), 4 corner Global Climate Models for each RCP (Cold Dry, Cold Wet, Warm Dry, Warm Wet) and 3 Hydropower Potential classes (Technical, financial and sustainable).