Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

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Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
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Location: Benishangul-Gumuz
Tributaries: Blue Nile
Drain: Blue Nile
Major cities nearby: Guba
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Ethiopia)
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
Coordinates 11 ° 12 '51 "  N , 35 ° 5' 35"  E Coordinates: 11 ° 12 '51 "  N , 35 ° 5' 35"  E
Data on the structure
Lock type: RCC gravity dam
Construction time: 2011-2022
Height of the barrier structure : 145 m
Crown length: 1 800  m
Power plant output: 6,000 MW
Operator: Ethiopian Electric Power Corp.
Data on the reservoir
Water surface 1874 km²dep1
Storage space 74,000 million m³
Satellite images from June 23 to July 20, 2020 on days without cloud cover, recorded by the Suomi NPP

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (also Great Renaissance Dam, English Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam , GERD, Great Dam of the Ethiopian Rebirth , occasionally also Hidase Dam ) is a dam project under construction with a length of almost two kilometers and 145 Meter high main gravity dam on the Blue Nile about 10 kilometers east of the Sudanese border in the remote West Ethiopian region of Benishangul-Gumuz . With 6,000 megawatts , the connected hydropower plant will be the largest in Africa. The reservoir will also be one of the largest on the continent with 63 billion cubic meters of storage capacity. Completion is scheduled for 2022. The Ethiopian government announced that the storage space will be filled from July 2020. Satellite images in summer 2020 seem to confirm this.

Naming

The dam was initially planned under the name "Project X", then as "Millennium Dam" ("Millennium Dam"). On April 15, 2011, the Council of Ministers renamed the project “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam”.

Planning

The structure will consist of a 145 meter high and 1800 meter long gravity dam made of rolled concrete and two power houses on both sides of the flood relief. The power plant on the right will have ten 375 megawatt Francis turbine generators and the one on the left six. The first 8 machines will be supplied by Alstom . The order value for this is € 250 million. A 5 kilometer long and 50 meter high side dam is being built as an auxiliary structure. The reservoir will have a storage space of 74,000 million cubic meters. The standard energy capacity , d. H. the annual average generated electrical energy should be around 15,700 gigawatt hours.

history

On March 31, 2011, the day after the project was made public, a US $ 4.8 billion contract was signed with Salini Costruttori as general contractor without a tender . The order for the installation of the turbines and the electrical systems went to the Ethiopian company Metal and Engineering Corporation (Metec), which is owned by the Ethiopian army . On April 2, 2011, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid the foundation stone for the dam. A rock breaking plant and a small airfield were built as symbolic first steps .

The first two turbines should have gone into operation in September 2014 after three and a half years of construction. The completion of the entire facility was originally planned for 2017. As is not uncommon for large projects, there were significant delays. At the end of 2018, the project completion rate was 65%. The main reasons for the delays were multiple changes to the plans as well as corruption and inability at Metec. Companies from the People's Republic of China stepped in.

International conflicts

The Nile is the lifeline of Ethiopia, Sudan and above all Egypt. Downstream Egypt opposes the dam, which he believes will reduce the amount of water it gets from the Nile. The then Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, on the other hand, argued in 2011, based on an unnamed study, that the dam would not reduce the availability of water in the lower reaches, but only regulate it, which would also make more land available for irrigation. Egypt could also save 7.5 billion cubic meters of water from evaporation by slightly lowering the Aswan Dam and implement projects to better use the water of the Nile.

After lengthy negotiations, the heads of state of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt signed a Declaration of Principles on March 23, 2015 in Khartoum . Among other things, it was agreed:

  • the implementation of studies on the impact of the dam
  • the development of rules for filling the reservoir : it would be possible to fill the reservoir within three years. In order to reduce the consequences of reduced water flow in Sudan and Egypt, it is important to extend the filling period. That is why Egypt and Sudan are pushing for the retention of smaller amounts of water, i.e. slower filling and a correspondingly longer filling time. In November 2019, the three states agreed to extend the filling period to seven years.
  • a drafting of an agreement on annual runoff : Ethiopia wants to use average rainfall; Egypt and Sudan, on the other hand, are pushing for provisions for dry years.
  • Procedures for Resolving Disputes

In June 2020, further contract negotiations between the three states failed due to legal issues. Sudan, fearing effects on its downstream Roseires Dam and seeing the fate of millions of people in danger, called on the UN Security Council . Direct talks between the conflicting parties resumed at the end of June under the leadership of the African Union . Egypt, like Sudan, favors an external arbitration board that is supposed to decide on any disputes regarding the water supply of the Nile bordering countries.

According to the non-governmental organization International Crisis Group , Egypt's water supply is not threatened with average rainfall , partly because of the Aswan reservoir .

Costs, funding and criticism

The name Great Dam of the Ethiopian Rebirth indicates that great importance is attached to the project in Ethiopia. Due to the international conflicts, especially with Egypt because of the dam, it is very difficult to convince international donors of the project. The Ethiopian government wants to bear the entire cost of the dam itself. She has issued bonds for Ethiopians at home and abroad, civil servants have to pay a monthly salary annually to finance GERD, other national projects are on hold. The turbines and other electrical equipment for around US $ 1.8 billion are reportedly to be financed by Chinese banks. That would mean that US $ 3 billion would have to be financed by the Ethiopian government in another way. The estimated US $ 4.8 billion construction costs, apparently excluding the cost of the transmission lines, represent more than 15% of the Ethiopian gross national product of US $ 31 billion in 2009 and about 60% of the state budget.

Ethiopia justifies the project with a very high energy requirement for the development of the country, with which one can also generate export revenues on a larger scale. The entire project, however, turns out to be a high-risk bet on a much stronger monsoon and much more extensive annual rainfall than they usually occur. The monsoon rains are of unequal amount, which a large dam can compensate for by storing it over several years. Experts assume that the project will only be able to use up to around 3000 MWe on average over the year instead of the planned 6000 MWe with constant capacity utilization. An overcapacity of 3000 MWe, on the other hand, makes a certain economic sense if the turbines are only operated seasonally and in alternation with other sources of electricity (especially wind power), as the winds blow particularly strongly in the dry season ( trade winds ), in the rainy season However, due to weak winds, wind power has to be largely replaced by hydropower.

Use

The main use of the dam will be (for Ethiopia) the production of electrical energy from hydropower and the stabilization of the availability of electricity in the power grid . The electricity generated in the hydropower plant is expected to be sold in Ethiopia and neighboring countries including Sudan and possibly Egypt. Selling the electricity would require the construction of strong transmission lines to the consumption centers such as the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and the Sudanese capital Khartoum, both more than 400 km away. This would be on top of the electricity that will be generated in other large hydroelectric plants currently under construction or recently completed in Ethiopia, such as Gilgel Gibe III .

See also

literature

  • Rawia Tawfik: Revisiting hydro-hegemony from a benefits sharing perspective: The case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam . German Development Institute, Bonn 2015, ISBN 978-3-88985-669-2 .
  • Philine Wehling: Nile Water Rights. An International Law Perspective . Springer, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-662-60795-4 .

Web links

Commons : Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project. salini impregilo, accessed May 5, 2015 (Italian).
  2. ^ A b International Panel of Experts on Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Project (GERDP): Final Report , May 31, 2013, p. 8, accessed on February 12, 2019.
  3. ↑ dw.com , December 17, 2016: dw.com: Ethiopia inaugurates gigantic dam (December 17, 2016)
  4. ↑ a b Salini Costruttori , March 31, 2011, salini.it: Salini will build the biggest dam in Africa (July 6, 2011)
  5. ↑ a b c Ethiopia’s huge Nile dam delayed to 2022 . In: Global Construction Review , December 14, 2018, accessed February 12, 2019.
  6. ↑ Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Construction "Making Progress". Ethiopian Monitor, February 2, 2020, accessed June 5, 2020.
  7. ↑ Dominic Johnson: Conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt: It gets serious at the Blue Nile . In: The daily newspaper: taz . July 16, 2020, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed July 18, 2020]).
  8. ↑ Ethiopia describes the first flooding as "historic"
  9. ^ A Nation Rallies Behind a Cause, Grand Millennium Dam ( Memento June 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed May 29, 2011
  10. ^ Alstom to supply hydroelectric equipment for the Grand Renaissance dam in Ethiopia. salini impregilo, January 7, 2013, accessed May 5, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Ethiopia Launched Grand Millennium Dam Project, the Biggest in Africa, Ethiopian News, April 2, 2011, accessed April 17, 2011 ( Memento of April 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Pawlos Belete, Great Millennium Dam moves Ethiopia, Ethiopia Capital called, 19 April 2011
  13. ↑ oe1.orf.at: Power for East Africa - Ethiopia's mega dam on the Blue Nile , February 2, 2016, accessed on February 12, 2019.
  14. ↑ Aaron Maasho: Ethiopia arrests ex-head of army firm in crackdown on security services , Reuters, November 13, 2018, accessed February 12, 2019.
  15. ^ Christoph Titz: Zoff am Nil. spiegel.de, July 8, 2019, accessed on July 8, 2019
  16. ↑ Egypt Stays Opposed to Ethiopia's Grand Millennium Dam Project, EZega, April 11, 2011, accessed April 19, 2011
  17. ^ A b Meles Launches Millennium Dam Construction on Nile River, New Business Ethiopia, April 2, 2011, accessed April 19, 2011
  18. ↑ Rawia Tawfik: Revisiting hydro-hegemony from a benefitsharing perspective: The case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam . German Development Institute, Bonn 2015, pp. 35–37.
  19. ↑ Kevin Wheeler and others: Cooperative filling approaches for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam . In: Water International , Vol. 41 (2016), pp. 1–24.
  20. ↑ Khartoum Announces Deal on Filling Renaissance Dam in 7 Years . November 18, 2019, accessed June 5, 2020.
  21. ↑ Rawia Tawfik: Revisiting hydro-hegemony from a benefitsharing perspective: The case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam . German Development Institute, Bonn 2015, p. 36.
  22. ^ Sudan: Millions at risk if Ethiopia fills mega dam without deal. aljazeera.com of June 27, 2020 (English), accessed June 27, 2020
  23. ↑ a b c Christoph Titz, DER SPIEGEL: Mega-Dam "Gerd": Ethiopia dams, Egypt foams - DER SPIEGEL - Politics. Retrieved July 1, 2020 .
  24. ↑ a b Electricity like hay. Die Zeit, June 30, 2016, accessed on October 11, 2016 .
  25. ^ The River Nile: A dam nuisance. Egypt and Ethiopia quarrel over water , The Economist, April 20, 2011, accessed April 24, 2011
  26. ↑ Why is the hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), sized for 6000 MW? Finfinne Tribune, June 19, 2013, accessed October 11, 2016 .