Hmm - don’t these desalination plants need electricity to operate? Seems we are going to need Musk and/or other genius minded to embrace nuclear power and soon.
How Much Power Do They Use?
Modern desalination (especially reverse osmosis, the most common method) is energy-intensive:Typical large plant: 3–5 kWh per cubic meter of fresh water produced (roughly 11–19 kWh per 1,000 gallons).
A big seawater desalination plant can consume 50–200+ megawatts of continuous power — comparable to a small city or a large data center.
Energy usually accounts for 30–50% of the total operating cost.
Why It Matters
Desalination is very effective for turning seawater into drinking water, but the high electricity demand is one of the biggest drawbacks.
In places like California, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, desalination plants often run on a mix of grid power + renewables (solar/wind) to reduce costs and emissions.
Newer plants are becoming more efficient, but electricity is still the main operational need.
The bottom line on water... We are never going to run out of it... Period!
All the water we have, is all the water we will always have and always have had. It gets recycled over and over and over again... Even the water expelled by astronauts comes back to earth... And the cycle continues. Water doesn’t disappear... It changes form from ice, to liquid, to steam, etc... But it does not go anywhere and it never ‘disappears’ and never has... It’s always there.
People who worry about water are misinformed.