Analysis of water balance and energy system status in Central Asia for improved modelling in transboundary river basins

Water, energy, and food challenges in Central Asia are critical issues, particularly in transboundary river basins like the Amudarya river, where competing demands for limited water resources exacerbate environmental and socio-economic pressures. In Central Asia, e.g. Amudarya river is essential basin for sustainable agriculture in downstream countries like Uzbekistan, which faces significant threats from upstream development projects such as the construction of Rogun Dam in Tajikistan and Qosh Tepa canal in Afghanistan. These ongoing projects are anticipated to decrease water flow significantly, which could severely affect for irrigation systems, increasing energy demands for pumping, and place considerable pressure on agricultural productivity and socio-economic stability. The work presented here aims to integrate water and energy system models to explore water-energy interactions and find sustainable solutions under different scenarios for changes in climate, land, energy and water resources. We use IRENA Flextool for energy and couple it with CWatM and Open Global Glacier Model as hydrological and glacial models, respectively. The presentation will present the current phase of water and energy system analysis of the selected region in Central Asia as well as the current development of model integration. The modelling approach is guided by transboundary case studies from the Tajikistan and Uzbekistan region where transboundary water and energy resources management are characterized by potentially different priorities upstream and downstream countries. The energy system models looks at the operations for power production and is used for planning investments in technologies to support the energy transition in the regions. Hydropower operations are, and will be, strongly influenced by the water availability e.g. precipitations, glaciers, and specific river basins have been selected to assess their operations while integrating an increasing amount of variable renewable energy sources. The water demand, mainly driven by the agricultural activities in Uzbekistan, is dependent on the water available and released from the upstream, both affecting the hydropower production and the transboundary relations. The local and regional setting analysis provides the basis for scenario development on future climate land, energy and water. These water and energy management settings are discussed by examples from the region with the focus on the nexus between water, energy and land.