Kenzhekhan Abuov

Kenzhekhan Abuov is a Senior Project Officer working on a special assignment in the Regional Cooperation and Integration Unit of the Central and West Asia Department (CWRD) of the Asian Development Bank. He is responsible for Climate Change Vision and cross-sectoral assessments, as well as for the energy and tourism sectors in CWRD. Mr. Abuov led the work on promoting the Energy Transition Mechanism in Kazakhstan. He was also part of the team that prepared legal and structural reforms in the Heating sector reforms in Kazakhstan. Mr.

Silvia Cardascia

Silvia is a water resources specialist at ADB, where she supports the design of projects in the People’s Republic of China and Mongolia. She also works on knowledge management and is one of the authors of the Asian Water Development Outlook 2020. Prior to joining ADB in 2018, she was a research assistant at the University of Oxford, a United Nations Fellow and a Programme Officer for the Italian Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Addis Ababa.

Environmental Impacts of Floating Solar Panels on Water Bodies

There has been a global trend of increasing deployment of floating solar panels (floatovoltaics) on water bodies over the last few years. Drivers for this have included potential reduction in evaporation and the desire to decarbonize electricity production. Given these environmental motivations, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the impact that floatovoltaics will have on the water body ecosystem itself, despite the many environmental goods and services which water bodies provide.