Ocean a new source of drinking water?

I am sure we are all well aware that our earth is sorrounded my water. Sadly, about 97% of it is too salty for human consumption. Earth's growing population, drought, rising temperatures and increasing industrial demand are straining the available water sources globally. According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people live in water scarce areas and that figure will probably hit 1.8 billion by the 2025.

With this growing threat, many are turning to desalination - i.e. get fresh water from salt water. Salt water is plentiful from the ocean and can be deemed a limitless and drought-proof supply of water. Globally, there are an estimated 13,080 desalination plants producing about 55.6 million cubic metres of drinkable water (sounds like a lot right? But that is only about 0.5% of the global water use).

Desalination does sound like a very viable and lucrative solution to our water scarcity problem. However, some issues do arise from the use of desalination plants:-

• Plants mean more energy consumption - a large desalination plant can use up enough electricity in one year to power more than 30,000 homes;
• Greenhouse gases produced by the plants;

Fortunately, there is a brighter side to the above problems - advanced technology and continuous research being done are making cost and energy requirements lower. Although it does not eliminate the problem, at least it allows more time for more research to be done to promote sustainability.

Desalination may well be the way forward to meet our growing water needs but to first control our growing water need, I believe we should all start saving water.....

Further reading: The Economist June 7th 2008