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> Desalination will never scale to a level suitable to supply that industry. Are you sure about that? It's simply a question of economics. As long fresh water
by qayxc 4y ago
> Desalination will never scale to a level suitable to supply that industry.
Are you sure about that? It's simply a question of economics. As long fresh water from other sources is significantly cheaper, no one's going to invest in large scale desalination.
Once this changes it becomes a question of which is more expensive - shutting down the agribusiness or running large scale desalination (which has options, from nuclear to solar to the use of metamaterials).
- sp332 4y agoIt is true in California, because you need to dump the concentrated brine somewhere, and doing that at industrial scale will run up against environmental protections.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoThere's a big bucket right next to California called the Pacific. Perfect place for sourcing water to desalinate and dumping brine back into without doing anything measurably harmful to salt concentrations in the Pacific. It's like a literal drop in the ocean. Most big Californian metropolitan areas are right next to it. There is no water shortage; just a reluctance to pay a fair price for it. The challenges in California are not technological but political and policy related. Local consumers of water seem to assume that water is like manna from heaven that has to be perpetually subsidized by the government. They feel entitled to it but are not really willing to pay for it; or even invest in common sense ways to reduce their consumption of it because it doesn't really cost them anything.