For laughs I one time gather a bunch of research (from the cutting edge to the practically applied) to do 1) large scale solar distillation for sea water desali

For laughs I one time gather a bunch of research (from the cutting edge to the practically applied) to do 1) large scale solar distillation for sea water desalination and for ethanol production. Think big arced mirrors focused on liquid salt tubes. 2) very large cannabis fields. If you water it it will grow in the desert without further aid. 3) yeast to turn the leaf materials into ethanol. Apparently a tiny chunk of Sahara could make a serious dent in energy consumption. (One can of courses also use biomass to make biogas or solid fuel) Yield is up to 1200 ton per square km. 205.2 ton ethanol per km2 (261 400 liter) 1 539 646 kwh/km2 If we use 100 000 000 barrels of oil per year 162 820 000 000 kwh The farm would be 0.1 million km2, the Sahara is 9.2 million km2, it would take little over 1%, say 2% US total farmland area is 3.6 million km2 Recycling yeast and chemicals gets much better at scale. We know how to pump crude into container ships but oil is a dangerous substance. Ethanol doesn't require state of the art safety measures, it can just spill, the boats can just sink without horrific consequences. On the contrary. The process on that scale leaves behind a lot of stuff that will have to be used for something. Seeds and seed oils are very valuable, hempcreed and bio plastics can be used for construction, can make fabrics, clothes, paper etc One could also make solar biochar and enhance the soil. Hemp by it self enhances the soil. Add some compost and some bio char and you should be able to grow other things too. The surprising thing to me was that there is a lot of ongoing research for each component of the plot. We kinda know how to do all of it but we also know very little, there is much to learn still.