Water, Energy and Food Nexus: A new perspective for managing High Aswan Dam Lake

Abstract

Significant impact on Nasser Lake (NL) inflow is highly expected due to unilateral on-going development plans in some of Nile Basin countries and climate change negative impacts. For decades, NL is considered Egypt’s fresh water bank, where Nile water is stored during flood to be used during the recession for agriculture, industrial, municipal and other uses. The expected development activities will have adverse effects on Egyptian water resources overcome, therefore new operation strategies and changes in infrastructure function are needed to adapt with such effects and meet future challenges. New creative ideas are suggested based on applying large scale Water-Food-Energy (WEF) nexus approach, to propose a development plan in the three main Khors which are the major water bodies within the lake. GIS and modelling tools such (ArcGIS 10.3, RIBASIM 7 and MATLAB 2016) were used to select the best scenario to implement the proposed plans. Results were affected mainly by the energy losses between pumping and hydropower and the limited capacity of Old Aswan Dam (OAD) reservoir. In addition, the economic feasibility of constructing renewable energy plants, the proposed infrastructure and WEF nexus approach offer a significant opportunity to meet future challenges. New operation strategies are proposed for NL to enhance the using of dead storage zone below 147 m AMSL, taking into consideration environmental issues.