-——They use their dirt cheap oil and gas-——
Hence my thought that we have learned that California sits on shale that could yield prodigious quantities of gas. They shun the use
If the extracted gas is taxed in gas rather than $$ desalinization at an inexpensive rate becomes possible. Of course there is fixed plant costs, but the presence of the produced water has huge economic benefit to off set that cost.
The irony here is that they came from Saudi Arabia and Dubai to California and Arizona and learned how living in comfort in the desert is possible. They took all those lessons home, including the architect and engineer designers, and applied them.
It is now time for Californians to go east to observe how to manufacture water.
While california does have a lot of shale oil, the jury is still out as to whether it can be fracked. the problem is that the subtratas that hold the shale oil are too contorted for horizontal drilling. we’ll see.
california could use brown water for farming too but they don’t.
the environmental hold ups on desalination will end when they can figure out industrial uses for NaCl salt besides making table salt. I’ve seen a couple ways to do it. but so far nothing systemic has been implemented.
While the Israelis are on the money, the true revolution in desalination won’t come until the cost of desalination falls anonther couple hundred acre feet to say $100 or even $50 @acre foot. That will happen when thorium reactors are commercialized in 10 years or so, NaCl is used to make a variety of value added products, ever more maintenance free materials are used to move the salt water around and perfect membranes are devised.
A lot of the pieces are in place to do this. Its just a matter of time.