I feel reasonably confident that desalination technology is currently sufficient to avoid civilization collapse and/or war.
Yes. But the experience up until now, is that desalinization is so much more expensive than other water sources, to the point that such plants often get mothballed when the other sources become available again.
According to the first link I found about large scale desalination, it can be done for a wholesale price of around $0.58/cubic meter.[1]
For comparison, my local water authority (in a part of the US that is not particularly dry) charges about $0.94/cubic meter.
Without knowing exactly what the difference is between wholesale and retail rates, I feel reasonably confident that desalination technology is currently sufficient to avoid civilization collapse and/or war.
> Development of cheap/effective desalinization methods.
Turns out this is largely impossible due to thermodynamics. The best we'll ever get is something like half the cost of what we're able to do today, which is very far from cheap.
Realistically, for the majority of human civilization desalination is a prime (and also becoming a much less-expensive) alternative.
Considering Israel and Singapore have already deployed desalinated water at lower costs than regular water in many parts of western countries, it really is a moot point.
Again, considering technological advances the prices will drop and once it hits a tipping point, every coastal city in the world will be able to switch as increased usage of the technology will not only mean lower construction costs of existing designs, but also lead to huge increases in research budgets. Since countries are already deploying it, it's really just a matter of time.
As mattmanser is pointing out, a lot of our water is exported through food. With desalination saving river water, there's a potential to greatly increase our exportation of water-intensive crops without damaging our waterways.
Desalination is incredibly expensive. At this point, they aren't completely out of water, as the crisis continues desalination will become more viable (expensive or not, people need water to survive).
> Environmentalists have long said desalination harms ocean life, costs too much money and energy, and the plant would soon be made obsolete by water recycling.
Well if that's true then awesome, let's get busy recycling water and "soon" we won't need to desalinate!
I actually wonder (yes, I'm not an expert) whether at some point drinking water will be valuable enough that you could profitably build a desalination plant in international waters and then deliver the water in tanks to the thirsty citizens who can pay for it. If you bottled at the source, maybe it wouldn't be more expensive than importing from France or Fiji?
Just for context. It's expensive, yes, but it's not the end of the freakin' world, people! Stop talking about crazy things like "attrition". Nobody is getting attritioned.
We might, but it'd be short-lived. The gating factor to desalination is the cost of energy. Massive conflict or war by decently-wealthy actors will spur development of more efficient desalination techniques as the money invested and the money to be made from such an innovation would be insane. (Desalination plant or tens of thousands of troops? Easy call.)
I'm genuinely curious - what are the economics like for desalination plants? I feel like we'd see a lot more of them if they were viable, but maybe we're just horrible at planning and fixing things.
Apparently there are desalination plants, but they are not cost-competitive with other freshwater sources, so only industrial developments that are required to provide their own water supply use them. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601861/chinas-massive-eff...
There are more than a few places where desalination is necessary, and we still haven’t come up with a way to make it cheap.
The current issue is that there is just no way that we know of to reliably desalinate that isn’t super energy intensive, so it comes down to trading energy for water. That’s why desalination is expensive.
Advances are always welcome, but it's worth noting that desalination works economically right now.
In the last 15 years large scale desalination has become practical. It's one of the great engineering feats of our time.
We can now generate it at scale for less than $.01 per 6.4 gallons. This includes the cost of the electricity, which is about half the expense.
San Francisco charges $.02/gallon to residents, 12 times that price. It's now cost effective for any coastal city in America to supply residential water this way.
Lots of people still think desalination is still impractical, because it was 20 years ago. They just haven't learned about the new tech.
Yes. But the experience up until now, is that desalinization is so much more expensive than other water sources, to the point that such plants often get mothballed when the other sources become available again.
https://www.circleofblue.org/2016/asia/water-scarce-regions-...
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