Nile's Power Play, the Quest for Basin-wide Bonhomie

Oct 7 , 2023
By Tsedeke Y. Woldu

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The GERD issue is complex, encompassing environmental, hydrological, geopolitical, and economic dimensions. While challenges persist, a cooperative approach based on shared benefits and responsibilities can offer a way forward for all countries involved, writes Tsedeke Y. Woldu (tsedeke.woldu@gmail.com), a practising civil engineer and a founding shareholder of Flintstone Construction, who once worked for the Water Resource Commission of Ethiopia.

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Ever since its conception, the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - the GERD - has been a source of heated discussion among hydrologists, environmentalists and hydro-politicians of the Blue Nile Basin. More recently, as construction of the Dam persisted despite Ethiopia's apparent setbacks, the rhetoric on filling its reservoir has started to be enriched by numerical discourse.

Experts published several studies analysing the relative cost and benefit of a dam filled quickly - say in four years - or slowly, say in 10.

For those who want to delve into the intricacies of such studies, "The GERD & the Nile Basin: Implications for Transboundary Water Cooperation," edited by Zeray Yihdego, Alistair Rieu-Clarke and Ana Elisa Cascao, is a pricey but good read. There is also the open access book, "Water Security in the Middle East: Essays in Scientific & Social Cooperation," edited by Jean Axelrad Cahan, in which Jenny R. Kehl has provided a statistical inspection of scores of river basins to understand how conflict is leveraged by independent factors such as geographic position of the headwaters, economic and political might or international intervention.

Concludes the author: "If a country controls the headwaters or the upriver point of contention, it uses the leverage over other countries that may have . . . political, military might or economic dominance." Citing Ethiopia and the GERD as an example, she adds that ". . . but the use of geographic leverage is highly correlated with conflict, not cooperation."

These and similar studies are guided mainly by international water conventions stipulating "equitable use" and "avoidance of significant harm" among riparian states. However, given the complex water management system already in the Easter Nile Basin - mainly Ethiopia, Egypt and the Sudan - there is considerable limitation, if not inadequacy, during the application of such studies.

One such shortcoming was manifested when, in February 2020, the US Treasury and the World Bank tabled for Sudan and Ethiopia a draft agreement with spreadsheets of computer-generated numbers, apparently rules for the filling and operation of the GERD, stipulating binding obligations of a perpetual tenure. Egypt had already initiated the document. Understandably, the Ethiopian government and, surprisingly, the Sudanese declined the offer.

Having had a keen interest in major water projects, I was aware of the basics of the GERD’s hydrological controversies. I was also lucky enough to see the offer by the Washington trio, during that terrible year of the pandemic. It may have incorporated offending features referring to the unilateral water release rules in the absence of riparian coordination and an agreement ostensibly for 10 years but requires unanimity to change (as good as an agreement without a sunset clause). However, this was perhaps the first numerically functional document ever tabled on the GERD’s negotiation table.

The US-brokered offer specified the amount of water to be released from the GERD under two major categories: Initial filling and operation after initial filling. Under each, the amount of water to be released was further classified as the release for "drought", "for prolonged dry" and "for prolonged drought" years. The minimum flow to safeguard the downstream environment and the maximum to safeguard the downstream structures were also defined.

Filling rates were the most controversial partly because filing the reservoir before commencing power generation would entail holding up water indefinitely. The Dam needed to fill up to its operating level and hold 41 billion cubic meters (bcm) of water to crank up all but two of its turbines. The lower two turbines, which have since been commissioned, operate at around 595m above sea level (masl). The filling rate rules compared the average annual river flow to current years and prescribed a minimum release if the average falls below a specified threshold.

As the controversy related to the ebb and flow of a mighty river, the numbers needed an appropriate frame of reference in time.

The February 2020 document operationalised two calendar years – the hydrological and the mitigation release years. A hydrological year was set between July 1 and June 30, and the mitigation release year from November 01 to October 31. Thus, observations on the hydrology are analysed until the end of June, impounding decisions would be made from July to September, and actions on power production and downstream compensation could be made from November through October.

The arrangement offers Ethiopia the inclusion of the wettest part of the adjacent hydrological year for current-year mitigation accounting while excluding the same amount from the determination of the onset of dry or drought years. As over 80pc of the average annual flow occurs from July through September, this arrangement is of ample significance.

The drought threshold was set at an annual flow of 37bcm, or 75pc of the average annual flow of 49bcm. Prolonged Dry and Prolonged Drought were defined with a moving average flow of 40bcm for five years and 39bcm for four years, respectively. Mitigation release, the amount released from the GERD (or through the GERD) to compensate for dry or drought years, was based on average flows falling short of these thresholds.

These definitions, essentially rules had they been signed by all parties, could have delayed full-scale power generation by several years. Or so believed all of us mortals on this side of the Ethio-Sudanese world. Ethiopian negotiators were outraged for being expected to commit to the probability of decades of dwarfing the grand Dam merely to the two lowly placed turbines.

Fortunately, the past years would be too wet to shorten the initial filling to four years. If there was one number with no dispute on both sides of the negotiating table, it was the level at which initial filling would be considered completed. Both offer and counteroffer put the same level. The last stage of the initial filling was at the crest level of the gated spillway – level 625masl. The documents state, “Filling is considered complete when in any hydrological year the GERD level reaches 625masl”.

Ethiopia has done this. The initial filling of the GERD is now complete.

This achievement has undoubtedly caused a nationwide celebration. However, it heralds the birth of another controversy over the operation of the GERD.

Going back to the offer on the table, in many respects, the rules for operation are similar to those for initial filling. They still deal with the water volume to be held and released under average and extreme climatological conditions. Operating a series of dams in a single river system entails additional altercations. Reservoir levels, retained volumes, and release flows at several water structures along the Blue Nile, not just at the GERD, need to be negotiated.

Contentions are centred on how much benefits Ethiopia would forego are equivalent to benefits gained or harms avoided by Egypt and Sudan. Given the location of the GERD a few miles from the border with Sudan, the benefits foregone by Ethiopia - if and when forced to release water from the GERD - can only be from reduced power production, measured at the prevailing unit cost of energy. Measuring harms avoided and net benefits gained in downstream countries could be more difficult.

It is difficult to quantify what is considered “significant harm”. There are also several ways of avoiding harm from water shortage if given sufficient early warning in a coordinated, cooperative framework. Independent experts often suggest Egypt can benefit from better water management methods, suggesting the difficulty of apportioning responsibilities should harm occur during water shortages.

Notwithstanding the above difficulties, compromise among the tripartite riparian states could be possible if the challenges were considered to optimise power generation interests within a single water management system. Hydropower generation, by default, a process of water storage for subsequent water release, supports this simplified approach. Assuming municipal and crop water consumption can be addressed from power generation flows, the dispute among the three countries can be reduced to how much water to hold during acute and prolonged drought years.

These automatically lead to two conducive positions; the metrics by which cost and benefits are assessed will be energy prices and uniform across the negotiating table. Coordination among all three dam owners for system optimality will also be imperative.

Take the case of the minimum environmental flow at the High Aswan Dam (HAD). The Egyptian offer wants it to be 500m3/s; Ethiopians countered with 40pc less or 300m3/s. A firm energy contract of 500GWh/month with Egypt or Sudan can ensure the 500m3/sec minimum flow, a third of the average flow rate at full power production. Incidentally, the Khartoum Declaration of Principles signed in March 2015 gives Egypt and Sudan priority on using energy from the GERD.

The equivalence is more complex when drought years kick in, triggered by a four-year average flow of less than 37bcm. Then, the competition for impounding among the cascades of giant water structures from the GERD to the TOSHKA (an offending appendage on the Nile Basin that diverts spills into the Sinai) becomes intense. The rush will be for storage volume and height, raising to reach comfortable operating heights.

A look at the enormity of the numbers explains the intensity.

The High Aswan Dam, for instance, rests on 32bcm of Nile water to start feeding its canals and turbines at level 147m and serve an annual demand of 55bcm. Its blissful operating height is 185m, at which level it would gorge 167bcm in its belly and spill billions more into the TOSHKA depression. Contrast this to the GERD’s fluctuation between 625m to 640m, which only needs about 25bcm as a standard operating volume - half the amount held by the Aswan Dam after it starts spilling at 178m.

Another example illustrates how the Aswan Dam dwarfs the GERD’s use of water. On a dry year of less than 37bcm, likely to exceed 91pc of the time, Egypt wants Ethiopia to release all the water retained above the 603m height in four years, with at least one-eighth of it in a year. The storage between 603m and 625m is about 24bcm, so the 12.5pc release works out to a meagre 95m3/sec of an additional flow. This is a third of the flow Ethiopia offered as a safeguard to the environment.

To the Aswan Dam, this additional flow, though it adds up to a volume of three billion cubic metres, is too insignificant in its operating height, although substantially close to 20pc and six percent of total demand to the Sudan and Egypt, respectively. Sudanese dam numbers pale in comparison to the GERD and the Aswan Dam. The combined storage of all three dams in Sudan - Rosiere, Sennar and Merowe - is less than 24bcm, which the GERD would hold in any good year above level 625m.

Notably, nearly all studies concluded that the GERD would benefit Sudan in nearly all aspects as long as it remains intact, releases the minimum environmental flow at all times and never discharges more than 200mm3 on any given day.

Using computable general equilibrium models (CGEM), Tewodros Kahsay, Onno Kuik, Roy Brouwer and Pieter van der Zaag estimated the impact of initial filling and long-term operation of the GERD on the gross domestic products (GDP) of all three countries. Filling would have cost the Egyptian economy a maximum of 87 million dollars (under extreme conditions) and an average loss of 37 million dollars. The combined gain for Ethiopia and Sudan was estimated to be 1.08 billion dollars, with Sudan taking a share of 187 million dollars.

When the operation begins in full, basin-wide GDP gain will rise to two billion dollars, with a distributed shares of 74pc by Ethiopia, 22pc by Sudan and four percent by Egypt. A remarkable finding by the study states, “Egypt’s economy is constrained more by energy than water. Hence instituting a basin-wide power trade scheme . . . would substantially boost [its] economy.”

Pundits on both sides of the divide often warn of being saddled by an agreement whose burden lasts for generations. That certainly may be a legitimate concern among all riparian countries. However, the numbers speak more hopefully. Now that the initial filling is completed early, thanks partly to the good gesture of the "Rain Gods", it may be time for the earthly contestants to follow this through auspiciously and start looking at the numbers for the operation of the GERD with a sincere, basin-wide cooperative spirit.

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PUBLISHED ON Oct 07,2023 [ VOL 24 , NO 1223]

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