07 November 2022
Is Desalination the answer to global water stress?
The global population hit the 8 billion mark in November. With the current growth trajectory, by 2100, we will be sharing our planet with over 10 billion people. It’s sobering to think how much stress this will place on our global resources, including the water we need to survive.
Water stress or scarcity is becoming a major problem in societies around the globe, especially where water is already a depleted commodity. Climate change has exacerbated the issue, and UN experts predict that for every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in the global average temperature, there will be a 20% drop in renewable water resources.
Desalination: A global picture
Physical and economic factors impact water scarcity: ecological conditions can lower water levels, while inadequate infrastructure challenges the harvest and distribution of rainwater.
From a physical perspective, it’s widely agreed that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are currently at the most significant disadvantage. Aside from having very little rainfall compared with other regions, MENA countries tend to have fast-growing, densely-populated urban cities with much higher water demand.
In Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers more from an economic standpoint – the country experiences plenty of rainfall but lacks the infrastructure to utilise it fully. Furthermore, there can be additional challenges in arranging insurances in many African territories.
Well-developed countries like the US also feel the pinch at both ends of the “water scarcity” spectrum. Outdated infrastructure and rapid population growth have led to crises in cities like Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey, and for the second year in a row, Arizona and Nevada face cuts from the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River after an extreme drought in the region.
Even the UK, traditionally mocked for its rainy climate, experienced widespread hosepipe bans after a sustained summer of record temperatures.
Can desalination plants alleviate some of the global water scarcity burden?
Desalination is on the up
The Middle East has been using desalination technology for decades. Traditionally it was included as a secondary element within thermal power plants developments primarily focused on generating electricity – now that trend has started to reverse.
Countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, and Morocco all have major desalination projects in progress or in the pipeline. The new Rabigh 3 desalination plant in Saudi Arabia, which cost USD 750 million to build and went into operation in 2022, produces more than 600,000m3 of desalinated water per day, serving 1 million households. Morocco alone aims to install 20 desalination plants by 2030.
The US has planned projects in Florida, California, Arizona and Texas, while Australia has already built or planned plants near the country’s largest cities. The largest of several European plants is at El Prat, in Spain, which supplies about 24% of water consumed in Barcelona. The global picture demonstrates desalination is already active in regions that need it most.
A more energy efficient future
There are several different desalination technologies in operation, some more mainstream than others. Historically most desalination plants that were directly attached to power plants would run off a process called multi-stage flash (MSF) desalination – a very energy-intensive thermal method where the water is boiled, usually by burning gas or oil-derived fuels and distilled.
As the world tries to rely less on fossil fuels, an alternative “greener” method of reverse osmosis (RO) – filtering water through a series of semi-permeable membranes that remove the salt and other minerals using electrically powered pumps – has become more attractive.
In this way, desalination projects can meet multiple ESG criteria. Consequently, government and investor confidence in the sector has grown, especially for plants linked with renewable power sources. In the next five years, water-poor Egypt is looking to quadruple desalination capacity by granting concessions to private companies to build 17 plants that run on solar energy.
As electricity is a major operating cost for RO desalination, projects with their own generation capability benefit from more cost certainty, as well as potential carbon credits in countries with emission trading schemes. Including a renewables component can also appeal to a wider group of insurers, providing greater flexibility in arranging insurance coverage programmes.
This article examines the risks and rewards associated with water security and discusses whether desalination could be the answer to a global issue.
Read our next article Biomass. This article explores the opportunities that biomass presents for a renewable future and discusses the associated risks for the construction sector during the design, construction, and operational stages of a project.
The darker side of Desalination
Desalination isn’t without its flaws. The desalination process has two main outputs: the freshwater people can drink and utilise and the leftover salty brine.
Waste brine will always be a problem for desalination operators to manage sustainably. A UN study in 2019 claimed 16,000 desalination plants worldwide were damaging the environment with flows of highly salty waste water and toxic chemicals. According to the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), in most desalination processes, for every litre of potable water produced, some 1.5 litres of fluid polluted with chlorine and copper is produced. How this waste is managed differs from country to country – but when it is pumped back into the sea, it creates toxicity, depleting oxygen and harming marine life.
It’s an issue that has halted progress on several major projects. One recent example of opposition is when California regulators blocked Poseidon – a USD 1.4 billion project planned for Huntington Beach this May, after two decades of deliberation. Environmentalists claimed the plant would have a devastating impact on marine life and could also mean a rise in sea levels.
Companies and investors wishing to minimise the negative environmental impact of desalination waste processing may need to set the bar higher than the laws of the countries in which they are operating. As ESG considerations have restricted insurers’ appetites for certain technologies (most notably in coal energy), simply meeting the minimum legal requirements may not be enough to ensure the insurability of a project.
Insurers and regulators are interested in the whole lifecycle of the project, and businesses need to prove they are disposing of this waste appropriately. This could mean treating the unwanted water before returning it to the ocean so it’s less harmful or recycling it for another use, such as de-icing agent. Brine does not need to be discharged into the sea, treated or otherwise, and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) technologies now exist that can evaporate and crystallise the brine into a solid waste product and offers an alternative approach that protects marine ecosystems.
Skills shortage
With the increase in projects across the Middle East and Africa, the number of specialist contractors and subcontractors in the region is running thin, impacting the insurance process. Underwriters require evidence that developers have procured the right team with the necessary skills and experience to deliver a high-quality project on time.
Insurers are also interested in the robustness of supplier agreements and whether they offer a degree of protection for common losses associated with desalination technology.
Reverse osmosis regularly suffers from membrane soiling, where the membranes get clogged up with materials they’re not built for. Either because of a specification failure – the sea might be saltier than expected – or the technology wasn’t commissioned or operated correctly. It only needs one of these to fail and the whole system goes down. Clients need to demonstrate to insurers they have reliable and experienced third parties on hand who can work quickly to resume operations and limit business interruption.
Innovation at work
The sector is already evolving at pace with exciting developments in the pipeline. Manhat, a start-up in Abu Dhabi, has developed floating platforms which use sunlight to distil fresh water. This means no electricity is used – instead, there is a mimicking of the natural water cycle, using sunlight to evaporate seawater and separate fresh water from salt crystals.
In the longer term, it is anticipated that desalination costs may reduce. There is now far more focus on renewables as the power source for desalination plants. In the Saudi Arabian city of Neom, which is currently under construction, an RO water desalination facility will be powered by 100% renewable energy. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2025, and the plant is expected to produce 500,000 cubic metres of potable water daily, meeting 30% of Neom’s planned water demand.
Retrofitting existing desalination plants is another innovation trend. Switching to modern high-pressure pumps and smarter variable frequency drives can result in significant energy and cost savings and have less environmental impact than building a new plant. Pump supplier Danfoss reported in 2020 that it had worked with Veolia Water Technologies to retrofit a plant from 1989 in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands, which resulted in an energy consumption reduction of 57%.
With the global population swelling and less predictable rainfall patterns, water desalination plants will play an important role in generating our future water supply. The global desalination market is predicted to hit USD 32.02 billion by 2027. Hopefully, the growing demand for these projects will increase the number of skilled workers in this sector, and generate the innovation needed to make these projects even more reliable and efficient, whilst being less damaging to our ecosystems.
The global Desalination market predicted to hit USD 32bn by 2027
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