Australia Moves Forward with Desalination Plans

A recent report from The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) states that by 2013, 4.3% of the fresh water used for industrial, agricultural and drinking water will be produced by desalination plants.

To date, Western Australia has been home to most of Australia's large scale desalination projects. In 2006, Perth Seawater Desalination Plant went on line, producing approximately 17% of the water supply for Perth's 1.6 million residents. A second plant, the Southern Seawater Desalination Project, is scheduled to be completed in 2011, hiking the amount of desalinated water used by Perth residents to the 30% level.

Drought conditions and uncertainty regarding prospects for future stable rainfall patterns in the states along the eastern and southern Australian coast provided the impetus for the newest round of desalination planning.

Planners assume that the availability of alternative water sources will help help solve the drought problems associated with The Murray-Darling Basin, the area around Australia's largest river system, which is known as Australia's food bowl.

Because water desalination is an energy intensive process, debate about the type of energy used to power the new plants continues. Most of Australia's energy is produced by coal fired plants. Desalination opponents argue that the integration of coal fired electricity with water desalination projects increases, rather than decreases, Australia's carbon footprint.

Desalination proponents partially blunted those criticisms through planning. The Perth plant, for example, operates entirely on renewable energy from a local wind farm. The Adelaide and Sydney Projects announced deals to secure 100% renewable energy to power their plants. The Melbourne project announced a plan to purchase renewable energy credits to offset its energy use.

Energy use at the Gold Coast Desalination Plant (Queensland), now operational, are still unsettled. Currently project managers have purchased a limited amount of renewable energy credits to offset carbon emissions (about 18 to 20 months).

Technological advances ultimately promise to render the issue of desalination's carbon footprint moot, as states such as Saudi Arabia begin experimenting with using concentrated solar power to run desalination plants.

Desalination's effect on marine life presents an additional environmental concern. Currently all of Australia's desalination plants monitor or plan to monitor the environmental impacts of plant operation, including the impacts on local marine life around the brine discharge areas.

While the push to use renewable energy and monitor the environmental impacts of the projects have blunted much of the criticism usually leveled at large scale desalination projects, the issue of project cost and subsequent increased water costs have arisen in all of the plant locals.

Desalination opponents suggest that better water management, including water recycling, provide more cost effective water management options. Those same critics will have another opportunity to voice their concerns in four years, following the construction and opening of all the proposed plants.

© 2010 Patricia A. Michaels