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Water resources
Why don't we have desalination plants? We expect the water companies to adopt cost-efficient solutions to achieve their outputs. We challenge the measures to maintain the balance between supply and demand proposed by companies to ensure they offer value for money, taking account of environmental and social costs. Water companies consider a wide range of measures to balance supply and demand, including desalination. While desalination can provide a very reliable source of water, the water produced by the process is relatively expensive and there can be significant environmental implications. Desalination is becoming more efficient, but still uses substantial amounts of energy that can lead to a significant contribution to greenhouse gases. Desalination also creates a waste stream of highly concentrated salts, which can cause local problems with discharges. Because of this, in most cases desalination is not cost-effective as there are lower cost alternative sources of water available. At the 2004 price review only two water companies in the south-east, Thames Water and South East Water, put forward cases for the use of desalination that were justified given the relatively high cost of the alternative sources of water available to them.  |
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