With the people in the world barrelling toward nine billion, the planet’s fresh water resources are being extended as never before in history.
Between 2010 and 2016, it’s projected that almost USD$88 billion in overall capital investment will likely be channelled into the business, as coastal states all over the world attempt to satisfy soaring demand for fresh water. However, the potential for facilitating the worldwide water crisis of the technology was hamstrung by the truth that desalination needs enormous quantities of energy, basically making it unaffordable.
Nevertheless, an expected game-changer for the desalination sector could be waiting in the wings. What will happen if a practically limitless energy supply such as the sun may be efficiently combined with the almost limitless seawater supply in the planet to help facilitate international water shortage problems?
They grant that such technology may nevertheless be in its beginnings. But the writers also shine the spotlight on long term efficiency increases in desalination business and the solar power sector to make a persuasive claim that widespread deployment of renewable-powered desalination technology isn’t an issue of IF, but when.
Desalination now accounts for less than one percent of the total international fresh water use. Nevertheless, as a coastal sector, it’s exceptionally well placed to reach a huge swath of mankind. Nearly 2.4 billion people — or nearly one out of every three individuals on the planet — reside within 100 kilometres of an ocean shoreline.
Of all accessible renewable power choices, the writers claim that solar (photovoltaic) technology has the best potential to become cost effective and broadly deployable enough to power desalination plants. The global installed electricity capacity of solar photovoltaic power increased by more than 40 percent annually during the very first decade of the 21st century.
Also, like seawater, solar power is a nearly inexhaustible resource. The efficiency increases that are continuing in the solar sector dovetail nicely with the reality that the energy prices and complete operating expenses of desalination have dropped considerably in recent decades. Nevertheless, desalinated water is nowhere close to being price-competitive with traditional water sources like rivers, lakes, or groundwater.
Prevalent sustainable-powered desalination can eventually be a reality for 2050, predicated on the evaluation of historical tendencies in the creation of renewable energy sectors and the desalination. (One possible means for this to occur would be to invest heavily in solar power rather than hydroelectricity. After all, many new dams have a comparatively small lifespan of several decades — the same number of time it might need solar power to become price competitive internationally.
On the flip side, the solar power sector – once its present technical limits are beat – can supply a clean and basically inexhaustible energy resource for desalination to Australia, America, in the Middle East as well as North Africa.
Solar-powered desalination might have a long road before it becomes a completely operating component of our world-wide water supply network. But it’s a road definitely worth investigating.