Promoting renewable energy in the water sector

Project description

Title: Renewable energies in the water sector
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Jordan
Lead executing agency: Water Authority of Jordan (WAJ)
Overall term: 2017 to 2021

Context

Jordan is one of the ten most water scarce countries in the world, the situation has been aggravated by population growth, influx of refugees from different countries, the depletion of the ground water due to agriculture expansion, and the impacts of global climate change. 

The growing deficit in the water sector poses serious challenges that affects all sectors and affect the wellbeing, security and economic future of all Jordanians. Energy supply also poses major challenges for the country.

The water sector is Jordan’s largest single energy consumer, with a share of 15 per cent of the electricity generated in the country. Electricity costs account for 50 per cent of annual operating costs in the water sector.

In response to the national water supply challenges, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) has released a comprehensive reform strategy for the Jordanian water sector in the form of the National Water Strategy 2016-2025. The strategy is intended to introduce renewable energy technologies for power generation to protect the environment and reduce energy price volatilities in the water sector. The water sector lacks the human and institutional capacities required to efficiently and sustainably use renewable energy (RE) to supply energy. The conditions for increased use of renewable energies in the water sector will be improved through the implementation of this project.

Objective

The conditions for the increased use of renewable energies in the water sector have been improved.

Approach

The project will provide expert advice to the WAJ and water supply companies (WSCs), in addition to the active involvement of partners in the project measures. The project operates in three fields of activity:

  1. Enabling managers from the WAJ and selected WSCs to make strategic decisions on the use of RE in the water sector. The partners are equipped to analyse the potential and limits of RE applications in the water sector by developing short-term and long-term scenarios. This serves as a basis for strengthening the conceptual, technical and economic skills of the experts and managers in the evaluation and strategic planning of the use of RE technologies in the water sector.
  2. Enabling the WAJ experts, managers and selected WSCs to plan RE projects in the water sector according to technical and economic criteria. To achieve this, the project implements human capacity development (HCD) measures with the experts and managers involved in the implementation, e.g. through training and coaching.
  3. Identification of innovative renewable energy approaches with dissemination potential and promoting the use of RE in the water sector. The focus is on providing expert advice and training to experts from selected WSCs on selecting innovative RE applications with dissemination potential. The experts and managers from WSCs are then enabled to implement the selected RE pilot measures in close cooperation with the private sector or research institutions. To support the upscaling of the measures of opportunities for cooperation with the financial cooperation are continuously examined.
  4. Ongoing review of cooperation opportunities in Financial Cooperation in order to promote the dissemination of measures.