> it should come as no surprise that the energy you get out by wasting your fresh water isn't as much as the energy you put in to get it in the first place Agr

> it should come as no surprise that the energy you get out by wasting your fresh water isn't as much as the energy you put in to get it in the first place Agreed, but maybe the effect can be used to alleviate the cost of getting the fresh water? For example, it doesn't cost so much to heat up a building once it's been heated up if it has heat exchangers in its HVAC: the output heat is used to heat up incoming hot air. A wasteful process can be made more efficient with stupid tricks.