3 Table of contents Foreword . 5 Executive summary . 7 1. Africa and its climate in next decades main issues . 9 1.1 Africa, a changing continent in a changing climate . 9 1.2 Present-day and future climate simulations . 11 1.3 Scenario results for climatic key variables on the African area . 12 2. Solar resources and their exploitation. Climate and technological changes compared . 17 2.1 Impact of climatic issues on PV production . 17 2.2. Comparison of the changes in the solar energy potential due to the rapid global cost decrease of PV modules . 18 3. Wind energy in Africa climate effects in short and medium term . 27 3.1 Climatic impacts on wind energy scales of analysis and modelling tools . 27 3.2 Preliminary results on the large scale . 28 3.3 Conclusions . 32 4. Bioenergy complexity in Africa and its changing climate . 33 4.1 Key messages regarding bioenergy in Africa . 33 4.2. Promising bioenergy feedstock in the African context . 35 4.3. Towards a sustainable bioenergy exploitation. Risk and opportunities for the continent . 42 4.4. Climate change and bioenergy in Africa: facts and uncertainties . 47 4.5.Assessing wood availability in future climate. A modelling approach . 48 5 Expected changes in hydropower resources . 63 5.1 Background . 63 5.2 Hydropower potentials . 63 5.3 Hydropower and climate change . 66 5.4 Changes in water resources . 68 5.5 Conclusions . 71 6. Conclusions and outlook . 75 Appendix A. Seasonal analysis of relevant climate parameters. . 77 Appendix B. Preliminary gross Evaluation of CH4, volume and energy, derived from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in African urban areas if disposed in managed landfills. 85 Appendix C. Key maps . 95 4 6 7 Executive summary Climate science has provided indications on the climatic change taking place in Africa: according to forecasts, higher temperature values are expected in the whole continent, with sharper increases in the dry belts just north and south of the tropics. Precipitation should increase in the tropic areas while it is expected to decrease in the northern and southern extremes of the continent. This already happening climatic change could have an impact on the raw resources available for renewable energy production, even if scientific literature on this aspect is somewhat limited and IPCC has pointed out that “Climate change will have impacts on the size and geographic distribution of the technical potential for Renewable Energy sources, but research into the magnitude of these possible effects is nascent“. Nevertheless, the issue is relevant for both policy makers and private investors needing to understand if and to what extent energy policies or investments in infrastructure should be tuned in response of changing climate conditions. For this reason, in this report, a first quantitative estimation of climatic effects on renewable energy resources ava