Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Desalination Category
Click here to view all posts

Desalination to triple by 2020, claims report

Posted by: Maven on March 18, 2009 at 6:29 am

From TMC, this press release:

The global desalinated water supply will grow at a CAGR of 9.5% over the next decade, reaching 54 billion m3/year (cubic meters per year) in 2020 — 54 trillion liters/year — or triple what it had been in 2008, according to a new report from Lux Research entitled “Desalination’s Future Champions.” According to Lux’s report, the demand for desalinated water will foster a rising wave of new water treatment technologies, all aiming to challenge the incumbent reverse osmosis (RO) in desalination’s three market segments — seawater desalination, inland brackish water, and water recycling. RO dominated the desalination equipment market with a 54% revenue share as of 2008, and the relative success of its challengers will vary by market segment.

“The bottom line is that there are growth opportunities in brackish water and recycling,” said Michael LoCascio, a senior analyst at Lux Research and the report’s lead author. “But RO is so entrenched that its variations will dominate for 20 years, with new technologies coming to market only through RO hybridization.” The report offers the first commercial analysis of emerging water treatment technologies, offering strategic insight to corporations, utilities, bulge-bracket banks and early stage investors looking to tap growth opportunities enabled by emerging desalination technologies.

Read the full text of this press release by clicking here.

Michael Kanellos of the GreenTechMedia blog recaps the report in layman’s terms:

You can buy the report, which covers 13 criteria over two axes (which sounds something like 3-D chess). Or, if you’re cheap, just read the following excerpts from these articles I wrote:

* Desalination is hot, but still expensive. Desalination expert Energy Recovery pulled off one of the few successful green IPOs in 2008. Over 90 desalination projects have been announced in the last three years.

* The earth pretty much has the same amount of water — 1.4 billion cubic kilometers — as it did a few billion years ago. Only about 0.75 percent of that, however, consists of readily accessible groundwater or freshwater, according to the World Water Council. The rest is frozen (2.25 percent) or salty (97 percent.). Thus, if we want more, the sea or brackish wastewater.

* But, ugh, the price. Some estimates put desalination at $650 to $1,000 or more per acre foot when water agencies often sell water for $200 an acre foot. Put another way, a 25 million gallon a day reverse osmosis plant for seawater can cost $100 million. Stink!

Find out more, including companies on the cutting edge of desal technology, from the GreenTechMedia blog by clicking here.

March 18, 2009 · Filed Under Desalination

Comments

Leave a Reply