The Role of Water in the Energy Transition

From 12 to 13 September 2017, the kick-off meeting of the funding initiative "GROW - Global Resource Water" of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) was held in Karlsruhe, Germany. Part of this initiative is the new research project WANDEL, in which the Wuppertal Institute, together with eight other German research institutions and SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), analyses the interlinkages between energy generation and water resources.

Over the next three years, the project, which is coordinated by the Center for Environmental Systems Research (CESR) at the University of Kassel, will investigate whether limitations in the availability of water can accelerate or delay the global energy transition. On the basis of different regional and global analyses, the objective of WANDEL is thereby to create a sound knowledge base and develop practice-oriented solutions.

In this context, the aim of the sub-project carried out by the Wuppertal Institute is to examine the linkages between water resources and energy technologies at local level by conducting a case study on solar thermal power plants (CSP) in Morocco. At global level, the future dissemination of selected energy technologies and their water uses are analysed with the aim of spatially and temporally locating the future water use for energy by 2030 with an outlook to 2050.