 Okay good afternoon everyone. So today well right now we are moving to a different topic that of energy security in the region and this is what I will be presenting today is the draft of a paper that came out of a larger research project that we are conducting at the Institute for the past year looking at socio-economic impacts of renewable energy developments in Middle East and North Africa with a particular focus on Egypt and Morocco. So the paper is focused on assessing the emerging innovation systems for renewable energy in Egypt and Morocco and I will start by briefly introducing the context for why low-carbon development is important for the region. Then I will talk a little bit about the conceptual framework we used for the analysis. I will give you a brief introduction into renewable energy development in the two countries and then we'll go into some analysis of elements related to the innovation systems and I will close with some comparative perspectives on the two countries. So first of all as we all know most of the countries in the region rely heavily on fossil fuels for their energy generation and as a result of course most of the greenhouse gas emissions are due to energy production transformation and use of these type of fuels although as a whole as you can see from the graph the share of greenhouse gas emissions in from the Minna region to the world CO2 emissions are not so are not so high they range there at about 5%. Also the region is facing water scarcity and if we look at the predictions by 2050 there will be a high water deficit in the region which suggests that alternative solutions need for providing water need to be found. Water desalination is one such solution but the problem is that it's highly energy intensive. At the same time because of population growth and economic growth energy demand in the region is growing at about six to eight percent per year which for Morocco and Egypt means that energy demand is expected to double by 2020 on triple by 2030 so new solutions for providing energy are needed. But because of the geographical position of the region the availability of renewable energy resources are very high the region benefiting from high levels of solar insulation one of the highest world wide as well as a strong wind resource so as you can see from the table the availability of renewable energy resources is much higher than in countries northern of the Mediterranean which have already developed a strong renewable energy sector and capabilities. Also for those of you who are familiar with projects such as desert tech or the Mediterranean solar plan there are also opportunities for the region to benefit from EU Middle East and North Africa energy market integration which would enable exports of renewable energy from southern Mediterranean countries to the north and already large investments have been made in the region and some pilot projects are in the pipeline. However as various studies show the region is faced with low industrial competitiveness and also a low innovation potential and from a social aspect very high levels of unemployment among the educated youth which for us suggests that in order to enable renewable energy developments in the region industrial integration is critical as well as the development of an innovation led economy that would enable these countries not only to develop technology but also to adapt existing technologies to local environmental conditions. Okay so the research questions that I was concerned with for this paper are first how does the renewable energy agenda play into the emerging of the emergence and functioning of an innovation system and second of all what factors affect policy choices and how are different interests managed in the decision-making process. So first of all I will define what we mean by an innovation system and using one of the available definitions and an innovation system is basically comprises the elements and here by elements we mean the different stakeholders involved in the development process and very importantly the relationships between them that are needed for the production diffusions and use of new knowledge that are either located within the national boundaries or outside. So a quick representation of and a rough representation of this innovation system are the structure what you see in the middle of the circle which are the actors the stakeholders the institutions the policies networks which are the relationships between the different actors the knowledge and the technologies available and then on the outside are the different functions of the innovation systems that result from the interaction of these different structural elements of the innovation system. So for the paper we use conceptual framework that draws on the core innovation system research which places it's called the sustainability oriented innovation system which plays much stronger emphasis on issues of governance and the sustainability transition process which brings in different elements than what we are typically needed for an innovation process for in in other sectors than clean energy and here are the new dimensions that the SOS system brings to the literature I will emphasize and I will talk primarily about the governance aspects and I will not spend a lot of time right now discussing the others you can find them in the paper but on the governance level the issues that are relevant are the fact that with clean technology we need to overcome multiple market failures in developing and deploying technologies and also that stronger consensus between different stakeholders is needed also the fact that the time pressure for finding solutions is much higher and the importance and the need of harmonizing policy frameworks also within national context but also across region at the cross regional level. So first of all what has some key aspects related to the development of renewable energy in each country in Egypt in 2008 the Ministry of Electricity and Energy has set a 20% renewable energy targets to be reached by 2020 which means that 7.2 gigawatt of wind energy are expected to be installed by then and also some targets for solar energy also the new one renewable energy authority which is a older agency in Egypt created in the 1980s has been tasked with the implementation of these renewable energy targets in Morocco the renewable energy targets have been set in 2009 at a level of 42% including hydro which from the renewable for the renewable energy means that 2 gigawatt of solar and 2 gigawatt of wind energy are to be installed by 2020 and the landmark project of this renewable energy target is the project in Wazazat which entails the development of 500 megawatt concentrated solar power plant which would be the largest such plant worldwide. Also in Morocco high commitment for green electricity exports have been made under the framework of the desert industrial initiative and Mediterranean solar plan and also a new agency the Moroccan agency for solar energy has been created to basically follow the implementation and carry out the implementation of the solar plan as well as which is interesting and will be discussed later as well as make sure that a certain level of industrial integration in the local economy takes place. Okay so what I will do now is look at the internal at the structure of the innovation system and look at what are the different to what extent the different elements are present and what aspects are currently missing and then I will discuss some or I will highlight some compare I will compare the some developments between the two between the two countries so if we look at Egypt the two organizations that are critical for the implementation of the renewable energy targets are the Ministry of Environment and RIA and the private sector is dominated by large firms that have the capacity to invest in the sector also there are the industry association for the wind industry but that are currently weak with respect to supporting the sector okay for time reasons I will try to just highlight some of the issues with respect to knowledge and technologies there are some initiatives that have been implemented in terms of integrating education into the curriculum and but are fairly limited at this stage and on the institutional level there is currently no feeding tariff to support deployment and several incentives are expected with a new electricity law which unfortunately have been delayed for the past couple of years especially because of the uncertain political instability in the country in Morocco the stakeholder landscape is a little bit more varied with the new organizations that have been created both in terms of the implementation as well as funding and the investment fund for renewable energy and industry associations that are a little bit more varied both for solar and wind energy and that have a higher stake in the current development also so on the knowledge and technologies there is a new institute for solar energy research that has been tasked with creating a platform for cooperation between the private sector and academia which although no or new established in 2010 seems to be doing some interesting steps towards that goal but on the institutional level there is still more to be done in setting up institutional framework that to enable renewable energy deployment so on the some comparative if we are to compare the developments between Egypt and Morocco we can see that the government commitment towards renewable energy has been stronger in Morocco as exemplified by several aspects first there is more clear responsibility and more authority built into the decision making of certain key organizations also new organizational structures have been created as opposed to in Egypt where currently the new renewable energy developments are emerging from organizations that have been there and are not extremely familiar with the implementation of the renewable energy plans and also more focused has been placed on building institutional capability into existing organizations okay with industrial integration which is important both for the innovation system locally is critical for both country for both of the countries both in terms of jobs and private sector development but a clear focus on industrial integration is currently present only in Morocco so this is something to be considered for Egypt as well also the cooperation levels in both countries are relatively low so more needs to be done in this respect and something that is the case for both countries is that there is currently a bias towards the large-scale renewable energy project which increases the risk of reducing the potential for technology transfer and job creation so change in the legislation to support a small-scale either grid connected or off-grid renewable energy development are critical for enabling the local private sector to participate more in both manufacturing as well as job as well as job creation so while there are various gaps into the emerging innovation system in both Morocco and Egypt there is a from what we can see now that it is likely that Morocco can position itself much better or at the can start earlier to move towards an integrated innovation system with a considerable focus on local industrial development and one of the reasons why this would be the case is that the motivations for shifting towards a sustainable development process are different in the two countries and those motivations would be defined by different factors first the fact that Morocco is much more dependent on imports of energy than Egypt so the pressure for shifting or looking for alternative energy solutions is much higher in Morocco also opportunities for export to Europe are much higher for Morocco due to its geographical location so Morocco is likely to benefit more from investment from Europe and would act these opportunities would act as an external push factor and also the commitment for renewable energy development and industrial integration comes from much very high up into the administration in Morocco but in Egypt it is likely that with political more political stability the interest to renewables will increase as well so yeah I think I made already this point and I will stop here