Quote:
Originally Posted by Coach
I honestly don't know enough about desalinization economics, or even the economics of moving water via pipelines to really know this for sure. The figure given in the OP was pulled from nowhere and based on the price to move oil which is harvested in a variety of complicated ways that requires very specialized infrastructure and workers. There's a lot built into that cost of moving water figure vs de-salinization that is going overlooked. Can the current amount of plants handle the increase demand? How much does it cost to build more and run them? How long will it take? If you have months left of water and no capacity to replace it and are years away from more de-salinization plants, your options become limited, because again, people need water every day to live. We don't need oil literally everyday to survive, but EVERYONE needs water all the time. It's not something you can handle a few weeks or even days of a shortage on.
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But pumping water over long distances requires vast amounts of energy as well. Based on the numbers I've seen, pumping water about 6-700 km uses the same energy as desalinating the same amount of water. So pumping it thousands of kilometres is a non-starter. Just the electricity costs would be 5-6x the price of desalination.