Page - 22 - in options, Volume summer 2015

africa 22 options + summer 2015 www.iiasa.ac.at regional focus Investment in renewable energy projects in North African countries could yield employment opportunities and boost the economy, says IIASA researcher Nadejda Komendantova. But the extent to which host  countries will benefit from such development depends on the type of technology transfer and how that technology will be embedded in the host society. Scientists from IIASA and ETH Zurich identified impacts from scenarios with varying degrees of local component manufacturing. They began with a scenario where all components are imported to the host country—termed vertical transfer. They then looked at the horizontal transfer scenario, where 40% or more of all components are manufactured locally and the development skills shift to host countries. The researchers found that the horizontal transfer scenario brings a significantly higher number of job-years to the region. Scientists from the Cabinet of the Minister of International Cooperation of Egypt and IIASA also investigated how investment in renewable energy capacities would impact the socioeconomic development of Egypt. “We found that the scenario based on electricity export to Europe scenario would yield the greatest benefits to the Egyptian GDP,” Komendantova says. “The scenario based on securing local demand would yield the highest industrial energy output, but would have the least socioeconomic benefits of all the scenarios analyzed.” JP Further info § Komendantova N, Patt A (2014). Employment under vertical and horizontal transfer of concentrated solar power technology to North African countries. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 40:1192–1201 [doi:10.1016/j.rser.2014.07.072]. § Farag NM, Komendantova N (2014). Multiplier effects on socioeconomic development from investment in renewable energy projects in Egypt: DESERTEC versus energy for local consumption scenarios. International Journal of Renewable Energy  Research 4(4):1108–1118 [www.ijrer.org/ijrer/index.php/ijrer/article/view/1754]. Nadejda Komendantova komendan@iiasa.ac.at New maps inform food security planning Two new highly detailed maps pioneered by IIASA scientists are making a valuable contribution to gauging economic conditions and planning for food security in Africa. The global cropland map shows the percentages of cropland at 1 kilometer resolution for the year 2005 across the globe, and was developed by IIASA scientists in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The researchers used a collection of data from multiple satellite sources to initially construct the map. Then, in a large-scale crowdsourcing project, volunteers reconciled or validated the data with observations interpreted from high-resolution satellite imagery from Google Earth. Getting such accurate information on cropland extent has previously proved difficult in Africa, where smallholder plots have been difficult to differentiate from surrounding vegetation in satellite images. But thanks to volunteer support, the new map provides a low-cost solution to that problem, says IIASA researcher Linda See. Information gathered though IIASA’s Geo-Wiki project, a crowdsourcing initiative that relies on a global network of citizen scientists, also enabled IIASA scientists to create the first-ever global map depicting field size. The volunteers analyzed thousands of high-resolution images of land cover to determine the boundaries of fields and hence their sizes. Although both maps paint a picture of farmland across the globe, they are of particular use in Africa where future food security is a major concern, says See. JP Further info Fritz S, See L, McCallum I, You L, Bun  A, Moltchanova E, Duerauer M, et al. (2015). Mapping global cropland and field size. Global  Change Biology 21(5):1980–1992 [doi:10.1111/gcb.12838]. Linda See see@iiasa.ac.at Renewable energy impacts in North Africa