Although it shouldn't. Adding salt to water is endothermic, it absorbs energy to add salt and releases it to separate them. The article talks about the trouble of breaking the bonds but this is wrong. It's harder to break the na-cl bond to make salt water in the first place.

We just haven't found a good process. That's it. Cheap desalination is not physically impossible. The deep ocean separation that someone here mentioned seems quite promising and gives off energy which is expected. Salt has weak bonds in water and when they reform the na-cl bond there's a lot of energy to be had.

Solar is cheap