MAKING WATER Desalination: option or distraction for a thirsty world? This report was prepared for WWF’s Global Freshwater Programme by Phil Dickie ( www.melaleucamedia.com ) June 2007 Contents Making water................................................................................................................................. 4 Option or distraction for a thirsty world .................................................................................. 4 The Freshwater Crisis................................................................................................................... 9 Water, water everywhere. Nor any drop to drink.................................................................... 9 The revolution in manufactured water ..................................................................................... 11 More and more a matter of membranes ................................................................................. 11 Desalination: The environmental impacts ................................................................................ 13 Processing habitat – intake issues .......................................................................................... 14 The brine issue ....................................................................................................................... 15 Keeping the membranes clean ............................................................................................... 18 Watering the greenhouse: the climate change implications of large scale desalination ........ 19 Flow on effects of large scale desalination ................................................................................ 21 A new lease of life for ageing power stations? ...................................................................... 21 Fuelling the nuclear option..................................................................................................... 21 Desalination: An industry and its economics............................................................................ 23 Looking for the breakthrough technology.............................................................................. 23 Desalination and alternative water supplies........................................................................... 24 The economics of desalinated agriculture.............................................................................. 25 Loading the bases: an inadequate basis for desalination....................................................... 25 The desalination industry ....................................................................................................... 26 Desalination - a world view ........................................................................................................ 26 Full steam ahead in the Middle East ......................................................................................... 27 Saudi Arabia – struggling to keep up with demand ............................................................... 27 Confused outlook on environmental issues............................................................................ 27 Desalination in Israel.............................................................................................................. 28 Desalination for the sake of a dying Dead Sea ...................................................................... 29 Battling over desalination in the USA ....................................................................................... 30 Trouble at Tampa Bay............................................................................................................ 30 Debating desalination in California ....................................................................................... 30 Seeking subsidies in Texas..................................................................................................... 32 Spain – a new way of endlessly chasing supply ........................................................................ 33 Carboneras – highly subsidised water for heavily subsidised agriculture?............................ 34 Watering the golf estates........................................................................................................ 34 Conflicts of interest in Spain's water debate .......................................................................... 35 Explosive growth in India and China........................................................................................ 37 India – desalinating booms as decontamination needs remain unmet ................................... 37 Water short China embraces desalination .............................................................................. 37 Leaks versus desalination in the UK ......................................................................................... 39 “Bottled electricity” under scrutiny in Australia..................................................................... 40 Sydney: On again, off again desalination .............................................................................. 40 Queensland: Desalination in a confused policy context ........................................................ 40 Perth: The thirstiest city embraces desalination..................................................................... 41 Can desalination help not hinder Australian water management? ......................................... 42 Desalination as distraction.......................................................................................................... 44 Making water – a basis for sound decisions.............................................................................. 45 Beyond desalination............................................................................................................... 45 Making economically and environmentally sound decisions on large scale projects............ 45 Resource planning before infrastructure planning ................................................................. 45 2 Towards an assessment process for large scale desalination plants....................................... 46 Minimising the environmental impact of large scale desalination plants .............................. 47 Making “Bottled electricity” climate neutral ......................................................................... 47 Desalination and subsidies ..................................................................................................... 47 Downstream impacts.............................................................................................................. 48 Further research on environmental impacts ........................................................................... 48 References .................................................................................................................................... 50 3 Making water Option or distraction for a thirsty world Seawater desalination is rapidily emerging as one of the major new sources of freshwater for the developed and some areas of the developing world, raising significantly the overall energy intensity, potential climate impact and cost of water supplies. This dramatic upscaling of the industry is occurring against a backdrop of unresolved questions on the potential environmental impacts of large scale processing of seawater habitat and the discharge of increasing volumes of concentrated brine wastes. WWF is concerned that as large desalination plants become "the new dams" attention is being diverted from less costly and more environmentally benign alternatives – water conservation, water use efficiency improvements and water recycling. WWF believes that better economic and environmental outcomes would flow from improved and consistent processes to assess water needs and the optimum mix of both supply and demand side measures that could be deployed to meet them. Where seawater desalination is established to be a part of meeting a real water need in the most cost effective and least damaging way, desalination plants need to be sited, constructed and operated to best minimise or mitigate their environmental impacts. As the world increasingly comes to the realisation that a combination of population increases, development demands and climate change means that freshwater will be in chronically short supply in rich and poor areas of the world alike, there is increasing interest in desalination as a technique for tapping into the vast and infinitely tempting water supplies of the sea. This is no new dream, and it has been technically possible to separate the salt and the water for centuries. But widespread desalination for the purpose of general water supply for land-based communities has been limited by its great expense and it is notable that the area where desalination currently makes by far the greatest contribution to urban water supplies is in the oil-rich and water poor States around the Persian Gulf. Now, however, improvements in the technology of desalination, coupled with the rising cost and increasing unreliability of traditional water supplies, are bringing desalinated water into more focus as a general water supply option with major plants in operation, in planning or under consideration in Europe, North Africa, North America, Australia, China and India among others. In 2004, it was estimated that seawater desalination capacity would increase 101 per percent by 2015, an addition of an additional