Navigating the challenges of the water-energy-nexus in the Guadeloupe archipelago: a model-based analysis

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a quantitative framework for analyzing water-energy nexus in island systems.

🏢実務担当者:Highlights cost savings and resilience benefits from reducing water losses.

🏛政策担当者:Demonstrates the importance of integrated water and energy policies for decarbonization.

Abstract Guadeloupe, like many island systems in the Caribbean, faces major challenges in achieving energy independence and climate neutrality. The archipelago currently imports nearly about 87% of its energy supply, making it highly vulnerable to fossil fuel price volatility and external supply risks. In electricity, only about 35% stems from renewable sources, with hydropower making up only less than 1%. At the same time, the water sector is marked by extremely high distribution losses, with up to two-thirds of drinking water lost before reaching consumers. This combination of challenges in both energy transition and water supply issues underscores the urgency of analyzing the water–energy nexus. This study extends the open-source Global Energy System Model for Guadeloupe by incorporating two previously excluded sectors: cooking and water supply. The enhanced model enables a quantitative assessment of the interactions between energy use, water demand, and distribution losses for the archipelago. The analysis explores sensitivities in freshwater demand growth and water loss rates, against the backdrop of Guadeloupe’s transition to a fully renewable energy supply towards 2050. The results show a steady decarbonization of the energy system, with the transport and cooking sectors gradually electrifying. However, the water sector emerges as a decisive factor: Under current conditions in terms of losses, electricity use for water supply could rise substantially, with desalination requirements driving up electricity demand by as much as 14% and total system costs by multiple billions of Euros compared to best-case scenarios. In contrast, reducing water losses could provide significant cost savings, ease pressure on renewable capacity expansion, and increase overall system resilience. By explicitly modeling the water–energy nexus across 144 different sensitivities for demand and distribution loss developments, this study demonstrates that addressing water distribution inefficiencies in Guadeloupe is a key factor in both overall water supply, but also for the energy transition as a whole. Integrated policy strategies will be essential to ensure both water security and a sustainable, decarbonized energy future for the archipelago.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ae91b9first seen 2026-08-17 04:54:33