A discussion is raised over an australian Kurnell desalination plant. The publicly owned plant is run on wind power, so it is 100% green. Now it is to be sold and leased back to get several billions up front. This is an example of clean wealth. Because the plant is green, it provides water that could be used for growing crops, it’s maintenance and repairs payed from the proceeds. This is not the case, the water replaces water from a dam catchment. One may wonder the use of which of these two is greener. But the point is that here you have a green, clean operation generating revenue that can be sold for today’s cash, with which another plant could be build, with which many wind turbines could be build, which all would generate productivity, wealth without burdening the eco system. Sadly the proposal is to build infrastructure, still is a carbon intensive process. So you do see the oil/banking relation that tries to free up cash up front to make oil consumption possible and the intermediaries rich. But it is only a matter of time before the oil used to build the roads comes from biocrops grown on fields irrigated by wind power desalinated water…People will keep complaining about who makes the most and what the price will be, but at least it won’t mean our planet is being destroyed.
Reverse Osmosis may not be the least capital intensive way to desalinate.