Unchecked overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide, a data investigation by the New York Times revealed, threatening millions of people and America’s status as a food superpower.
By the same argument, replacing the coal fired power plant with wind and solar wouldn’t pose a challenge either.
The point is, you’ve got to compare apples to apples: either coal power vs. desalinization powered by coal, or renewables vs. desalinization powered by renewables. In every case, the pollution produced by the desalinization process (i.e., the brine etc.) is simply added to the pollution produced by whatever means was used to generate the power for it, which means @soEZ’s attempt to compare desalinization to power generation doesn’t make much sense.
A coal burning plant has a comparisable smaller base of implantation; deactivating the coal plant to have it replaced by a solar or a wind (if even possible) would hardly output the same energy.
By comparison, a desalination plant takes a large area, by the shore, where wind and solar are plentiful, so it can be fitted with such energy source from the start.
The brines can and should be channeled to harvest the salts in it. The salt is raw matter for chemical industry.
It’s amazing how quick we are to find problems to a promising solution but the moment extracting water from surface or underground sources becomes impossible or unfeaseable we will resort to those solutions.
It generates all the waste associated with the electricity it uses, which is often from coal fired power plants…
Considering the area a desalination plant requires, fitting it with wind and solar would not pose a challenge.
By the same argument, replacing the coal fired power plant with wind and solar wouldn’t pose a challenge either.
The point is, you’ve got to compare apples to apples: either coal power vs. desalinization powered by coal, or renewables vs. desalinization powered by renewables. In every case, the pollution produced by the desalinization process (i.e., the brine etc.) is simply added to the pollution produced by whatever means was used to generate the power for it, which means @soEZ’s attempt to compare desalinization to power generation doesn’t make much sense.
A coal burning plant has a comparisable smaller base of implantation; deactivating the coal plant to have it replaced by a solar or a wind (if even possible) would hardly output the same energy.
By comparison, a desalination plant takes a large area, by the shore, where wind and solar are plentiful, so it can be fitted with such energy source from the start.
The brines can and should be channeled to harvest the salts in it. The salt is raw matter for chemical industry.
It’s amazing how quick we are to find problems to a promising solution but the moment extracting water from surface or underground sources becomes impossible or unfeaseable we will resort to those solutions.