AU-EU Water Energy Food Nexus

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Reinforce the activities in the long term the AU-EU HLPD CCSE Partnership.
• Provide knowledge and scientific modelling as evidence base of the water-energy-food-nexus including the environmental, social and economic trade-offs to contribute to R&I strategy and policy making.
• Increase clean energy generation in the African energy systems.
• A sustained network of African experts and expertise in this area.
• Improve in the long-term governance to advance knowledge and scientific modelling of the water energy food nexus including the environmental, social and economic trade-offs (governance aspects should be included since they are under-represented in the current research works).

The topic is contributing to the activities of the AU-EU High Level Policy Dialog (HLPD) Climate Change and Sustainable Energy (CCSE) partnership. Climate changes and increase usage of water in all economic activities create more stresses on water use for energy generation. Energy generation covers in this context energy from renewable sources and energy vectors such as electricity, heat and fuels. Therefore the needs for African countries of having their own dedicated models to simulate and estimate the stresses on the water-energy nexus are crucial for their policy decision and energy planning. International agreement and trade issues can be considered in the model. Most of the current models are based on developed country standard and usage.

The proposal should then develop and test models for decision makers and planners to implement energy infrastructures and energy supply in Africa which safeguard a systemic approach to the water-energy food nexus. These models can be based on existing reliable source codes and models. The test should be made on the case of an existing African water basin. Participation of societal stakeholders is considered important

Actions should promote the highest standards of transparency in model adoption, going beyond documentation and extending to aspects such as assumptions, architecture, code and data. The outcome of the project should be widely disseminated and the source code of the model should be open access to stimulate future development. To ensure future uses, African experts in water-energy nexus and in model development should be full partners in the project. The project should identify further local training needs.

The project should also link with existing European activities to create synergies and cross-fertilisation. The project should participate in the activities of the HLPD CCSE partnership.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 4 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Africa