Climate change forces Austrian companies to rethink hydropower

Austria gets over 60 percent of its electricity from hydropower, compared with a world average of 16 percent.

But climate change is disrupting things. "In the future, the amount of water available will remain the same, but its distribution over the year will change," explains an executive at state-owned Verbund, the country's main electricity producer.

"We'll have less water in summer and more in winter", he says. But the country is forging ahead with hydropower infrastructure, constructing a new pumped-storage hydroelectricity station in the mountains above Salzburg.

High in the Austrian Alps, hundreds of construction workers toil in a huge underground project aimed at storing hydropower as climate change has reduced the country's water-dependent electricity production.Austria draws more than 60 percent of its electricity output from the renewable energy source, compared to a global average of 16 percent, with more than 3,100 dams spread across its rivers.