8 ms·
I was surprised how cheap it is. Desalinated water costs ~50 cents per 1000 liters [1]. That's about the same amount of water as a typical American household us
by gamegoblin 3y ago
I was surprised how cheap it is. Desalinated water costs ~50 cents per 1000 liters [1]. That's about the same amount of water as a typical American household uses per day.
50 cents per day for a fully desalinated water supply is... incredibly cheap.
If you're interested in water policy and water management / engineering, I cannot recommend enough reading the book "Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Costs
- yhgxfvx 3y ago[flagged]
- iudqnolq 3y ago*typical American household uses directly. Don't forget food, industrial, etc
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bufferoverflow 3y agoYes, but you pay for that when you purchase the products. These costs are baked in.
- iudqnolq 3y agoBut we're talking about increasing the per-gallon cost of everything. So the baked in cost would increase.
- jjk166 3y agoOr moving water intensive operations away from areas where water is expensive. No one is going to be doing desalination in Michigan.
- dylan604 3y agowhy not? we're growing heavy water using crops in places with little water. logic is not always the deciding factor if involved at all in a lot of modern things
- sophacles 3y agoThere are a few very big salt mines below the great lakes. We could totally get a desalinization plant in Michigan by pulling water from the lakes, salt from the Detroit salt mine, and combining them in the input stream to the plant!
- dylan604 3y agosomeone has been playing in the perpetual motion machine sandbox again i see
- 6510 3y agoI think it sounds quite sensible. How is it different from using all fresh water as an all you can dump free-for-all public sewage system before wondering where the drink is coming from? In India they poop in the water then take a bath in it and cook their food in it. In the west we do our pooping upstream because it looks so much cleaner that way. NO! I fail to see how adding salt before desalination is any less sensible. Lets just do it.
- dylan604 3y agoyou're desalinating water to have an abundant source of fresh water. why in the world does taking fresh water and adding salt being mined from the ground together to make salt water to then desalinate make any sort of sense?
- 6510 3y agoWe already have abundant fresh water. We use it to transport sewage, fertilizers and other crap to the ocean. It would be silly to try to clean it afterwards - but here we are? Adding salt is a great idea, it pushes our collective stupidity to a noteworthy level of nonsensicalness. It makes me wonder what other hard to remove poisons we could add to challenge ourselves. Perhaps design a new disease?
- janalsncm 3y agoI think the implication is that the costs will be higher than 50 cents if 50 cents does not cover non-household use.
- Veserv 3y agoFreshwater withdrawals per capita in the US (which includes agricultural exports and animal feed such as alfalfa sent to Saudi Arabia) are around 1550 cubic meters per year. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-withdrawals-per-capita?tab=table https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/water-withdrawals-per-cap... So that is around $775 per person per year assuming no net change in water use. In contrast, Germany uses around 410 m^3, France around 475 m^3, and Australia around 724 m^3, so the US is a significant outlier.
- iudqnolq 3y agoThat equates to around 4,000 liters per person per day. Freshwater withdrawals is a very broad category, it also includes water released to turn hydropower turbines. But it's also unfair to compare across countries without taking into account water sent between countries in the form of produce and products.
- Veserv 3y agoYou were quibbling about how 1,000 liters per day does not adequately account for all usage. Freshwater withdrawals is on average going to be a overestimate and the US is one of the worst outliers with significant agricultural exports which are one of the largest contributors to differential water withdrawals. Despite this, it would only be $2.00 per day for a fully desalinated water supply even if we safely overestimate usage. Despite it being 4x higher than the person you replied to said, that is still incredibly cheap.
- 3y ago
- bsder 3y agoAgreed. Desalinization is cheap. It works just fine for providing water for coastal people. As California is proving. What it does not do is provide freshwater for argibusinesses. As California is also proving in the Central Valley. :(
- rs999gti 3y agoThere are no water pipes from the coast to the central valley? I wonder if NIMBYism blocked that? And if an agency wanted to transport water like the USA national oil pipeline system, would they be blocked similarly?
- function_seven 3y agoThere are aqueducts between the CV and coastal areas. The water goes the other direction. If desalination becomes widespread, I imagine the water not shipped to the coast could remain in the Central Valley. I don’t know one way or another if this would make political or economic sense. EDIT: Wikipedia has a good overview: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California
- frumper 3y agoWater rights are so complicated that they’d probably sell the water to the Central Valley before it ships to them. I think it very unlikely that they’d give them up.
- pjc50 3y agoThere's no way the water would be affordable for agriculture if it had to pay for pumping it uphill/inland. There's a reason the rivers flow in the other direction.
- r3trohack3r 3y agoFrom my (limited) understanding of agribusiness, particularly in California, it will be hard to be cost competitive with current water sources moving forward as they are heavily subsidized (read: near-zero costs). The upfront cost from my understanding is in drilling a deep well. Those wells keep getting deeper and costing more. But, past that, it's just the cost of running the pumps to drain the underground aquifers. IIUC the cost of water is free plus the cost of harvesting it from the commons. I might be wrong here, but all the billboards that say "is growing food wasting water?" along the interstates in California don't really matter over long time horizons. They're advocating for draining the water tables. You can't do that forever. Doesn't matter if it was a "waste" or not, it'll be gone soon and they'll have to pay to pull water from somewhere else or stop growing crops there (or the state will pay to give them water). When "free" water runs out, other water sources will suddenly be cost effective. But it's hard to compete with free.
- Zetice 3y agoTo be fair to the author, difficult here could just mean “more complex than it seems” which he does a good job of illustrating, specifically around the additional concerns that go in beyond the actual processing of the water. He says it’s viable for many applications.
- weaksauce 3y agoThat's not too bad. the normal baseline consumer costs are actually more expensive than that. normal base use in irvine ca is 1.78 per 748 gallons which is almost 3000 liters. (2831.488 liters) I assume that's cost to make and not total cost to consumer post treatment plant distribution and maintenance so it would be more expensive than that but still in the ballpark of reasonable.
- BeetleB 3y ago> That's about the same amount of water as a typical American household uses per day. I assume you meant per year?
- timerol 3y agoNo, 1000L/day is about right for a typical American household. [1] claims "The average American family uses more than 300 gallons of water per day at home." 300 gal is 1136 L. https://www.epa.gov/watersense/how-we-use-water https://www.epa.gov/watersense/how-we-use-water
- lexicality 3y agoI know American toilets are comically big but 250L a day on flushing them seems insane to me. A cursory google suggests the average UK household uses 350L a day in total!
- bhandziuk 3y agoThat's like 20 flushes. It's a lot more than I'd expect for "typical". Maybe a family of 5 does 20 flushes. Or maybe it's 2 people with strict anti-if-it's-yellow policy.
- codedokode 3y agoAs I understand, before getting 50-cent water you need to pay a billion dollars upfront. Why so expensive?
- gamegoblin 3y agoThe biggest plant in the US, near San Diego (Carlsbad), cost $1B to build and produces 200,000 m^3 per day. Israel's biggest desalination plant, Sorek, cost $400MM and produces over 600,000 m^3 per day, so 40% the cost and 300% the water. So I assume a large part of the cost of the Carlsbad plant is just all the usual reasons everything is insanely expensive to build in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsbad_Desalination_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba... https://www.water-technology.net/projects/sorek-desalination-plant/ https://www.water-technology.net/projects/sorek-desalination...
- nwallin 3y agoThe Carlsbad plant is in Carlsbad, CA. If you look at the neighborhood it's in, the houses are 1,200-2,000 square feet and sell for $2-$5 million. Everything is expensive.
- whiddershins 3y agoIf we could make cheap small nuclear reactors I don’t think drinking water availability would even be a thing we talk about near coasts.
- bick_nyers 3y agoIt seems as though many problems get solved once the cost of energy approaches 0.
- Nifty3929 3y agoResidential water use is nothing. In California, where we have persistent water shortages, residential, commercial and industrial water use ( including all landscaping, golf courses, etc) all put together still only amount to 10-20% of overall water use, depending on rainfall
- ktta 3y agoIs the only remaining use left agricultural?
- enjoylife 3y agoLooks like on average the data shows 42% agricultural. https://water.ca.gov/Programs/California-Water-Plan/Water-Portfolios https://water.ca.gov/Programs/California-Water-Plan/Water-Po...
- Nifty3929 3y agoNo, you are being misled by “environmental water,” which is a fancy way to say it’s water we don’t use because were not allowed to. This doesn’t make any sense, how can you include water you don’t use in your accounting for water use? The reason this is there is to downplay the outsized use in agriculture, and also to shift some blame to folks that voted not to allow this water to be used in the first place. But still, if you want to cut spending and are looking for where your money is spent, you don’t include money you choose not to earn in your list of spending.
- frumper 3y agoLetting it flow through the rivers and delta to the ocean is half of it.