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  • The Guardian

    Is there a beautiful, briny solution to the world’s clean water crisis?

    Desalination is often dismissed as being expensive and polluting. But advances in tech are putting it back on the agenda
    by Fiona Harvey Apr 10, 2019 6 minutes
    ‘Cape Town last year managed to stave off the worst of its water crisis by investing in desalination, as well as restricting water use.’ Children at a communal tap near Cape Town. Photograph: Mike Hutchings/Reuters

    It’s tipped to be the key environmental challenge of the century – and there’s plenty of competition for that accolade. Water. The planet has plenty of it, but most of it is unusable, locked up in salty oceans. But demand is soaring and the strains are starting to show, from China to Latin America, India to California.

    Almost a billion people lack access to clean water, and the forecast is for this number to grow sharply in coming decades. Last year, Cape Town came dangerously close to running out of water. Even rainy England has been told: carry on like this and you’ll run out of the stuff in 25 years.

    There are no easy solutions – but one technology that has proved controversial in the past may be on the cusp of a new dawn. Call it desalination 2.0. Freshwater supplies are under increasing pressure across the world, with the 4 billion people currently living in water-scarce areas predicted to rise to 5 billion by mid-century. Climate change, growing populations and our consumption habits

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