Desalination is finally cheap, and it’s only getting cheaper. Will this usher a world of plentiful water everywhere? Will we be able to build in the Sahara?
Vertical farming might be the way to go for things where the water demands are a huge part of the cost *in general*, but I don't think you can vertically farm cheese. Some of those cows are going to be too damn high up.
A vertical dairy farm would be possible, assuming alfalfa can be grown. The manure would be piped down to basement level and processed to extract nitrogen for the needed fertilizer as well as methane, which could power the lights and cow elevators and eliminate the normal odor. Methane from digestion could be captured in the cow feeding and milking rooms and add to the available fuel, which can also power the pasteurization of the collected milk. Cheese processing could also be done on site to save on fresh milk shipping costs. Add a couple of bulls and a birthing room, and an abattoir and meat processor for the aged out heifers, and it would be electricity and water in, cheese, milk and ground beef out.
Lab grown meat would be a good thing to have, but lab grown cheese is probably not going to happen. Vegan cheeses are all pretty awful, especially when ground or melted.
The cows might actually prefer the interior to an open dairy farm: better odor control, no flies, no sun beating down or extreme temperatures. You could even give them the wagyu treatment: play relaxing music, have a massage machine and add beer to the cows diet, and the happy cows will produce more delicious milk.
> I only published 2 articles over the last 2 weeks instead of 4.
I'd prefer if you publish 2 good articles instead of 4 mediocre ones. If you having nothing interesting to write about, it's fine to wait until something fascinating pops up. Being bored is a perfectly valid state - it's much better than being boring.
Not bored at all. Things going on in my personal life. But if you think some articles are boring, please do let me know! I’m happy to take the feedback in
Haha. I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of guy. Have no fear. Just giving you permission to take your time.
As Julian Shapiro wrote:
> I find that writers who post frequently (say, twice weekly) are rarely worth reading consistently. I read for insights. And no writer can generate profound insights on a fixed schedule. I aggregate writers who publish sporadically. When they post, they truly have something to say.
That's interesting. But in this case, I can give you the inside story (long-time editor) - Tomas does have bursts of energy where he's much more productive than at other times. Then he banks articles, so he can release them on a schedule. So there are always insights!
The economics look striking. It makes me wonder if we are looking at a fair comparison and considering the full cycle of the water and related infrastructure. In one of the links provided (reference to the Spain's prices in 2009), it links to water tariffs in the wikipedia, further developing what it encompasses:
"Water and wastewater tariffs are not charged for water itself, but to recover the costs of water treatment, water storage, transporting it to customers, collecting and treating wastewater, as well as billing and collection. Prices paid for water itself are different from water tariffs."
Yes I think I mention it’s apples to oranges. But the idea is that it gives you a sense of orders of magnitude of costs. This is not crazy expensive when it’s much cheaper than existing prices!
Tomas, I can't remember if it was your blog or another one that discussed the possibility of the use of tunneling from the oceans to low lying desert areas close to the seas--northern Egypt, Jordan, possibly the Salton Sea to create new "Green Zones". This would have the dual impact of creating living and farming areas in the desert areas as well as lowering sea level by inches to feet. Obviously the closer the desert areas are to the water source, the less tunneling needed and the lower the cost. It sounded like a good project for The Boring Company, if Musk could get his head out of US politics long enough to study it. Sort of like a worldwide TVA from the 30's to green the globe and offset melting ice caps. The fight for water needs to be avoided if mankind is going to (more or less) peacefully continue to inhabit this planet.
The caveat is that technology can solve many of the problems we face, but not without the will and resolve to implement it. Human nature is the destabilizing element in the equation.
Thomas, Thanks for explaining about desalination. I've been thinking we'll need more desalination plants because of the increasing demand for water for data centers. However, your idea that
"the prices of both solar photovoltaics and batteries have been dropping at about 12% per year for decades! That’s why solar plus batteries can now cost $0.12 per kWh,⁸ and that number will keep falling at ~12%/year. Within a decade, even if subsidies disappear, the cost of electricity will go down by 50-65%." That's way off. The price of electricity has been going up steeply in recent years, mainly because of the inefficiencies in solar and wind power. Instead of dropping 50-65%, electricity is rising about 10%/yr, and will keep on rising until we build about 1000 more nuclear power plants (in the US), which will take decades. As for 24/7 grid battery backup, which is very expensive and not getting cheaper, there isn't enough money in the world to provide enough backup for any extended period of bad weather. The best case for more desalination in desert areas is with SMRs (small nuclear reactors), but again, it will take quite a few years to get them approved and production to scale up enough to make them affordable.
And because of inflation, the other miscalculation is in Capex. Your graph only comes to 2015. In the last few years, costs of everything have gone way up - land, labor, and construction materials.
I’m a big fan of nuclear, but I’ll believe future low prices when I see them.
As for CAPEX, the way to think about it is real, not nominal dollars. Controlling for inflation I expect them to only go up in overregulated regions—something that can change fast
Many less developed countries do not have infrastructure to produce potable tap water. So a chart showing that S Asia uses very little potable water may be confusing. Even tap water provided by “national” water companies may contain pathogens and taste foul. People drink bottled water (price $1 per 20 litres) and use ground water for washing, irrigation etc. Meanwhile tap water will cost 1$ per 1000 litres.
That’s a reasonable assumption. Take into account the fact that several S Asian countries are in the Horse Latitudes where there are strong reliable winds, and sunlight is strong, the future price of electricity should be low.
Some years ago, Vietnam facilitated the supply of electricity from private suppliers into the grid. The result was that there was very soon too much electricity available in some areas, and the government owned electricity company had to turn off some power sources.
I've had several different RO watermakers on sailing boats that I cruised in the oceans on and found them relatively efficient, although somewhat noisy, and they were rather crude technologically compared to the latest land-based models. There is the concern of the highly saline discharge, but assuming that can be overcome, I am hopeful that the future of fusion nuclear energy will lead to essentially limitless potable water availability.
What would the impact be on the price of energy required if reliant on small nuclear reactors instead of solar? Would the upfront cost be prohibitive or would this further reduce the cost projection of .30/ton?
Understanding of course not every country would be permitted to use this form of energy
Nuclear is quite expensive, and SMRs at least at the beginning will be even more expensive. Unclear it can be competitive because the savings from economies of scale might be offset by reductions in efficiency.
So for now this isn’t viable. But maybe in the future! Either if batteries or nuclear shrink enough
Really cool as always, Tomas. I work in the engineering part of the field. Seeing a global economic analysis was very insightful. Costs are -based on both your analysis and my experience - not the problem. However, brine discharge it. Technologies to recover low- and high- value products are available, but both finding buyers and transporting the goods are show-stoppers. They manage more or less in the industrialized areas of the Middle East, but anywhere else it remains impossible. Discharging the brine directly into the ocean is absolutely nuts - because of a) the environmental consequences and b) you miss on a lot of water recovery from further concentrating it if you try to obtain the by-products. Salud!
I started my research broadly aligned with this. Then I looked into the actual environmental concerns of dumping it in the sea and I don’t see it as a problem anymore. Why do you?
There is just a small amount of non-conclusive studies about the environmental impact it has. The few ones that look into the 'long-term' (it is still too early to really call it long-term) saw enourmeous patches of a white, salt-based precipitate on the surroundings of the dumping area. I can only imagine those patches growing larger and killing everything around. As far as I understand, we have not been able to quantify the environmental impact it has, but I'd say it does not look good.
Not sure who Wellington is, but to be more charitable, I think the purpose of rocketry investment is for satellite military technology, i.e. SpaceForce, not for colonization purposes, and the colonization stuff is more a marketing scheme to secure investors and cover up the fact that Musk's focus is military rather than humanitarian.
"All in all, they’ve been able to reduce costs by 15% every time the installed capacity doubles."
-- this is interesting because I read that the per-unit production cost of WW2 aircraft went down by 15% every time the number built doubled. Maybe it's a rule of thumb that works for multiple industries?
Thomas, it's an interesting article with interesting and profound implications. One detail I got interested in is that "(desalination) plants must run 24/7". The thing about that is that fresh water seems a lot easier to store than electricity. If desalination can be used to soak up "excess" solar and wind it does not seem to matter that water desalination is running at a constant rate, it's the average over a period of time that is key. In Australia we have a lot of domestic solar panels. On sunny days the cost of available solar ought to be cheap. Can we use desalination to make good use of that?
The problem is the loan you took out to build your plant assumes it is producing enough water to sell to pay the interest on the loan, so if you are only running it half the time, your financing costs have doubled, even if your electricity cost went down.
We have desalination plants in Australia that are essentially there for water security during the next drought, not needed in ordinary circumstances. Does that change the equation?
The other aspect is that Australian population generally live along the east coast, due to the available fresh water. The southern and west coasts have access to both solar and sea water (without a mountain range in between). We have quite a political debate about population, living costs and housing policy. Affordable fresh water is a game changer.
Vertical farming might be the way to go for things where the water demands are a huge part of the cost *in general*, but I don't think you can vertically farm cheese. Some of those cows are going to be too damn high up.
You just need more faith!
A vertical dairy farm would be possible, assuming alfalfa can be grown. The manure would be piped down to basement level and processed to extract nitrogen for the needed fertilizer as well as methane, which could power the lights and cow elevators and eliminate the normal odor. Methane from digestion could be captured in the cow feeding and milking rooms and add to the available fuel, which can also power the pasteurization of the collected milk. Cheese processing could also be done on site to save on fresh milk shipping costs. Add a couple of bulls and a birthing room, and an abattoir and meat processor for the aged out heifers, and it would be electricity and water in, cheese, milk and ground beef out.
Here is some faith!
Sounds awful! Hope we can get lab-grown options before we lock cows into multi-storey buildings for their entire lives 😢
Lab grown meat would be a good thing to have, but lab grown cheese is probably not going to happen. Vegan cheeses are all pretty awful, especially when ground or melted.
The cows might actually prefer the interior to an open dairy farm: better odor control, no flies, no sun beating down or extreme temperatures. You could even give them the wagyu treatment: play relaxing music, have a massage machine and add beer to the cows diet, and the happy cows will produce more delicious milk.
> I only published 2 articles over the last 2 weeks instead of 4.
I'd prefer if you publish 2 good articles instead of 4 mediocre ones. If you having nothing interesting to write about, it's fine to wait until something fascinating pops up. Being bored is a perfectly valid state - it's much better than being boring.
Not bored at all. Things going on in my personal life. But if you think some articles are boring, please do let me know! I’m happy to take the feedback in
Haha. I'm a glass-is-half-full kind of guy. Have no fear. Just giving you permission to take your time.
As Julian Shapiro wrote:
> I find that writers who post frequently (say, twice weekly) are rarely worth reading consistently. I read for insights. And no writer can generate profound insights on a fixed schedule. I aggregate writers who publish sporadically. When they post, they truly have something to say.
More context here: https://www.julian.com/guide/write/practicing
That's interesting. But in this case, I can give you the inside story (long-time editor) - Tomas does have bursts of energy where he's much more productive than at other times. Then he banks articles, so he can release them on a schedule. So there are always insights!
The economics look striking. It makes me wonder if we are looking at a fair comparison and considering the full cycle of the water and related infrastructure. In one of the links provided (reference to the Spain's prices in 2009), it links to water tariffs in the wikipedia, further developing what it encompasses:
"Water and wastewater tariffs are not charged for water itself, but to recover the costs of water treatment, water storage, transporting it to customers, collecting and treating wastewater, as well as billing and collection. Prices paid for water itself are different from water tariffs."
Yes I think I mention it’s apples to oranges. But the idea is that it gives you a sense of orders of magnitude of costs. This is not crazy expensive when it’s much cheaper than existing prices!
Tomas, I can't remember if it was your blog or another one that discussed the possibility of the use of tunneling from the oceans to low lying desert areas close to the seas--northern Egypt, Jordan, possibly the Salton Sea to create new "Green Zones". This would have the dual impact of creating living and farming areas in the desert areas as well as lowering sea level by inches to feet. Obviously the closer the desert areas are to the water source, the less tunneling needed and the lower the cost. It sounded like a good project for The Boring Company, if Musk could get his head out of US politics long enough to study it. Sort of like a worldwide TVA from the 30's to green the globe and offset melting ice caps. The fight for water needs to be avoided if mankind is going to (more or less) peacefully continue to inhabit this planet.
The caveat is that technology can solve many of the problems we face, but not without the will and resolve to implement it. Human nature is the destabilizing element in the equation.
Yes, that was Tomas.
Yes, it was me indeed! “Seaflooding”
Agreed!
Thomas, Thanks for explaining about desalination. I've been thinking we'll need more desalination plants because of the increasing demand for water for data centers. However, your idea that
"the prices of both solar photovoltaics and batteries have been dropping at about 12% per year for decades! That’s why solar plus batteries can now cost $0.12 per kWh,⁸ and that number will keep falling at ~12%/year. Within a decade, even if subsidies disappear, the cost of electricity will go down by 50-65%." That's way off. The price of electricity has been going up steeply in recent years, mainly because of the inefficiencies in solar and wind power. Instead of dropping 50-65%, electricity is rising about 10%/yr, and will keep on rising until we build about 1000 more nuclear power plants (in the US), which will take decades. As for 24/7 grid battery backup, which is very expensive and not getting cheaper, there isn't enough money in the world to provide enough backup for any extended period of bad weather. The best case for more desalination in desert areas is with SMRs (small nuclear reactors), but again, it will take quite a few years to get them approved and production to scale up enough to make them affordable.
And because of inflation, the other miscalculation is in Capex. Your graph only comes to 2015. In the last few years, costs of everything have gone way up - land, labor, and construction materials.
Hi Al!
I don’t think that’s what I said!
Solar and battery costs have shrunk in the last few decades, but the rest of the sentence only refers to solar!
You are right that solar LCOE has increased recently, which is why I looked into this here:
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/can-solar-costs-keep-shrinking?r=36xnz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I’m a big fan of nuclear, but I’ll believe future low prices when I see them.
As for CAPEX, the way to think about it is real, not nominal dollars. Controlling for inflation I expect them to only go up in overregulated regions—something that can change fast
Why must desalination plants run 24/7?
What would be the climate impact of turning large amounts of desert green?
Because CAPEX is high so you need to amortize it across 24h of operation.
Climate change:
- Less albedo would warm up the world minimally
- More carbon capture would cool it
Not sure what the balance would be, probably not a big impact.
I know this is a useless « like » comment, but I really want to express that I really like the stuff you write
Not useless. This is why I do it. Yay!!
Many less developed countries do not have infrastructure to produce potable tap water. So a chart showing that S Asia uses very little potable water may be confusing. Even tap water provided by “national” water companies may contain pathogens and taste foul. People drink bottled water (price $1 per 20 litres) and use ground water for washing, irrigation etc. Meanwhile tap water will cost 1$ per 1000 litres.
So you say it’s an even better case for these countries. Awesome!
That’s a reasonable assumption. Take into account the fact that several S Asian countries are in the Horse Latitudes where there are strong reliable winds, and sunlight is strong, the future price of electricity should be low.
Some years ago, Vietnam facilitated the supply of electricity from private suppliers into the grid. The result was that there was very soon too much electricity available in some areas, and the government owned electricity company had to turn off some power sources.
I've had several different RO watermakers on sailing boats that I cruised in the oceans on and found them relatively efficient, although somewhat noisy, and they were rather crude technologically compared to the latest land-based models. There is the concern of the highly saline discharge, but assuming that can be overcome, I am hopeful that the future of fusion nuclear energy will lead to essentially limitless potable water availability.
I cover the saline discharge in the premium article this week. My take: not a big deal!
Fusion is far away… let’s hope batteries and / or SMRs can do the trick
Agreed - fusion is not feasible; SMRs will be great, but we're not quite there yet...
What would the impact be on the price of energy required if reliant on small nuclear reactors instead of solar? Would the upfront cost be prohibitive or would this further reduce the cost projection of .30/ton?
Understanding of course not every country would be permitted to use this form of energy
Nuclear is quite expensive, and SMRs at least at the beginning will be even more expensive. Unclear it can be competitive because the savings from economies of scale might be offset by reductions in efficiency.
So for now this isn’t viable. But maybe in the future! Either if batteries or nuclear shrink enough
Yet, when desalination plants are proposed in California, all the de-growthers come out to oppose them and then they can’t get built.
De-Growthers are bad for humanity.
Really cool as always, Tomas. I work in the engineering part of the field. Seeing a global economic analysis was very insightful. Costs are -based on both your analysis and my experience - not the problem. However, brine discharge it. Technologies to recover low- and high- value products are available, but both finding buyers and transporting the goods are show-stoppers. They manage more or less in the industrialized areas of the Middle East, but anywhere else it remains impossible. Discharging the brine directly into the ocean is absolutely nuts - because of a) the environmental consequences and b) you miss on a lot of water recovery from further concentrating it if you try to obtain the by-products. Salud!
PS. Happy to talk more about it if you want!
Thanks!
I started my research broadly aligned with this. Then I looked into the actual environmental concerns of dumping it in the sea and I don’t see it as a problem anymore. Why do you?
There is just a small amount of non-conclusive studies about the environmental impact it has. The few ones that look into the 'long-term' (it is still too early to really call it long-term) saw enourmeous patches of a white, salt-based precipitate on the surroundings of the dumping area. I can only imagine those patches growing larger and killing everything around. As far as I understand, we have not been able to quantify the environmental impact it has, but I'd say it does not look good.
Between desalination, artificial icebergs, and Antarctic colonization, I am thoroughly convinced that Mars colonization is a total scam.
Wellington Musk has the will and resources to make that happen, so it will!
Not sure who Wellington is, but to be more charitable, I think the purpose of rocketry investment is for satellite military technology, i.e. SpaceForce, not for colonization purposes, and the colonization stuff is more a marketing scheme to secure investors and cover up the fact that Musk's focus is military rather than humanitarian.
"All in all, they’ve been able to reduce costs by 15% every time the installed capacity doubles."
-- this is interesting because I read that the per-unit production cost of WW2 aircraft went down by 15% every time the number built doubled. Maybe it's a rule of thumb that works for multiple industries?
There might indeed be some sort of mechanism at play here, some rules that determine that percentage
Thanks for an interesting and optimistic article, hope it works out as foreseen.
Thomas, it's an interesting article with interesting and profound implications. One detail I got interested in is that "(desalination) plants must run 24/7". The thing about that is that fresh water seems a lot easier to store than electricity. If desalination can be used to soak up "excess" solar and wind it does not seem to matter that water desalination is running at a constant rate, it's the average over a period of time that is key. In Australia we have a lot of domestic solar panels. On sunny days the cost of available solar ought to be cheap. Can we use desalination to make good use of that?
The problem is the loan you took out to build your plant assumes it is producing enough water to sell to pay the interest on the loan, so if you are only running it half the time, your financing costs have doubled, even if your electricity cost went down.
I haven’t run the math but I believe your desal installations would be too expensive for that.
We have desalination plants in Australia that are essentially there for water security during the next drought, not needed in ordinary circumstances. Does that change the equation?
https://www.melbournewater.com.au/water-and-environment/water-management/water-quality/water-treatment/desalination
The other aspect is that Australian population generally live along the east coast, due to the available fresh water. The southern and west coasts have access to both solar and sea water (without a mountain range in between). We have quite a political debate about population, living costs and housing policy. Affordable fresh water is a game changer.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/averages/rainfall/