Assessing Climate-Induced Risks to Critical Energy Infrastructure: A Comparative Analysis of Hydropower and Oil and Gas Systems in Drought-Prone U.S. Regions

Climate change poses escalating threats to energy infrastructure in the western United States, yet the interdependencies between affected sectors remain insufficiently characterized. This study develops a comparative, empirically informed framework for understanding how drought transfers vulnerability across hydropower and oil and gas systems. Drawing on the IPCC vulnerability assessment approach, cascading-risk perspectives, and socio-technical systems theory, the study advances four hypotheses regarding mechanisms of drought-induced cross-sector vulnerability transfer. Through a structured comparative synthesis of generation data, reservoir levels, water consumption records, and emissions inventories across the western United States (2001-2024), the analysis documents that hydropower facilities have experienced cumulative generation declines of up to 23% since 1980 (Turner et al. , 2024), with individual drought years producing output reductions of 48-81% at major facilities. Simultaneously, hydraulic fracturing water use per well has increased up to 770% (Kondash et al. , 2018), predominantly in high water-stress regions. The assembled evidence is consistent with a cascading dynamic in which hydropower shortfalls necessitate fossil fuel substitution, which amplifies water demand and emissions, potentially reinforcing drought conditions. Published estimates attribute approximately 20 billion in monetized damages to this mechanism over 2001-2021 (Qiu et al. , 2023). The analysis further suggests that threshold effects in reservoir levels may intensify cross-sector stress nonlinearly. The study proposes integrated adaptation pathways bridging water, energy, and climate governance, and identifies priorities for future empirical and modeling research.