Water-Energy Nexus // A Pre-feasibility Study for Mid-east Water-renewable Energy Exchanges
By David Katz and Arkadiy Shafran. In the face of strong population growth, the region’s countries are in need of long-term strategic planning in the water, energy and land-use sectors. Israel and Palestine have access to the Mediterranean, and thus, relatively easy access to desalination, but have relatively little open spaces necessary for large scale renewable energy facilities; whereas Jordan’s access to the sea is far from its population centers, but it has a relatively large amount of unpopulated spaces that are very suitable for producing renewable energy, particularly solar. This report presents a pre-feasibility study of an initiative for water-energy exchanges between Israel, Jordan and Palestine as a means of addressing water and energy needs in an economically efficient and environmentally sound manner.
The overarching idea is that Israel and/or Palestine could produce desalinated water and supply this to Jordan, while Jordan could supply Palestine and Israel with renewable energy. As such, all sides stand to gain from mutual dependencies of regionally integrated water and energy sectors.
As a pre-feasibility study, the objective is to present a workable framework for how such an arrangement could be implemented, to evaluate various technological options for achieving such an arrangement, to undertake initial economic analysis of such a project, and to identify political benefits and challenges to project implementation. The subsections of this study will present a brief survey of some of the resource scarcity issues facing the region, followed by a description of some of the policies in place to address these issues, and finally a more detailed description of and rationale for the proposed water-energy exchanges.
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Water-Energy Nexus // A Pre-feasibility Study for Mid-east Water-renewable Energy Exchanges
Published
November 2017
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- EcoPeace Middle East is a unique organization at the forefront of the environmental peacemaking movement. As a tri-lateral organization that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists, our primary objective is the promotion of cooperative efforts to protect our shared environmental heritage. In so doing, we seek to advance both sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in our region. EcoPeace has offces in Amman, Ramallah, and Tel-Aviv.
- Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) is a German political foundation, associated with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Germany. The foundation is represented through over 90 country and regional offces worldwide. In the Palestinian Territories, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung supports since 1996 local and regional initiatives that are directed towards the two-state solution. The country offce is currently working in the felds of policy analysis, the rule of law, energy security, strategic thinking, civil engagement, and dialogue programs.