The Cost of Making More Water

In Saudi Arabia at King Abdullah University of Science, they are producing freshwater with the water from the Red Sea. Through the process of desalination, you can produce freshwater from salty seawater. Desalination plants use a process called reverse osmosis which in short, removes all the impurities from the seawater by entering one side of the pipeline and leaving as freshwater from the other. This supplies the university's freshwater, around five million gallons a day, and is only a tiny amount of the freshwater produced in Saudi Arabia. In a nation of 33 million people, desalinated water makes up around half of their freshwater supply. Saudi Arabia isn't the only country to use desalination in order to get most of their water. Other countries in the Middle East and North Africa also have plans for large desalination projects to be built. Renewable water supplies in many of these countries fall far below the definition of absolute water scarcity by the United Nations.

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Desalination is meant to provide freshwater to countries where freshwater is scarce. However, this process requires massive amounts of energy. This means that it costs a ton of money in order to have it everywhere and is also happens to be restricted to countries with access to seawater and a plentiful supply of fossil fuels. These desalination plants are also damaging to the environment. They emit greenhouse gases and disposes of brine, which is extremely toxic, and laced with toxic treatment chemicals. This process is still in its early stages, but as bigger desalination plants have been popping up, engineers have made the process more efficient, reduced the costs, gotten better membranes, and come up with energy-recovery methods. This could be very beneficial for many people in the future and since it is the pumps that require electricity, it is easy to cut the use of the massive amount of energy being used since they can be powered by anything.