Can't they get water from the ocean?
All of this requires lot of electrical power, large pumps, cleaning, corrosion-resistant materials, etc. Desalination is generally the last resort when there are no other options.
It is much simpler, more efficient and less expensive to properly manage freshwater resources, maintain networks, eliminate losses and leaks, etc.
Great Britain is not an oil rig or a desert devoid of fresh water. It does not have cheap energy such as natural gas to produce electricity at low cost. Nor is it Israel, which has only the Jordan River and reuses every litre of water two to three times.
The UK has chosen to delegate the maintenance of its water and sanitation network to private operators who chronically underinvest in the maintenance, renewal and improvement of the network.
That's the bloody problem. Injecting a little fresh water from desalination into a leaky network by importing natural gas for the necessary energy is a monumental waste.
Desalination is at the bottom of the list of things to be addressed.
Uhhhh that seems pretty cheap and affordable?
> can cost from just under $1 to well over $2 to produce one cubic meter (264 gallons) of desalted water from the ocean. That's about as much as two people in the U.S. typically go through in a day at home.
What am I missing here? Even if you triple the cost, people will pay a $180 water bill before living in a water scarcity situation.
And the market and technological developments (batteries) are actively working against this pricing anomaly - I can see the phenomena of negative pricing disappear completely in electricity markets in the next few years given the current explosion in grid battery deployment.
It would be _vastly_ cheaper and easier to build reservoirs.
you might as well just do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Contour_Canal and spend the rest of the money building homes.