POWER March 2016 - 23

WATER & WASTEWATER
1. California streaming. The Claude " Bud " Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which
went into operation north of San Diego in December 2015, can supply up to 10% of the San Diego
area's water. It operates on the same site as NRG's soon-to-retire Encina power plant. While
it's the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, Carlsbad is dwarfed by plants in
the Middle East. Courtesy: Poseidon Water
ect. They argued that the need was not as dire
as regulators said in 2006, was too expensive,
used too much energy, and could impact endangered
river species.
In nixing the Suez project late last year,
PSC Chairman Audrey Zibelman said, " The
record demonstrates that circumstances have
changed since the commission first asked the
company to develop a new long-term water
supply in 2006. " Hudson Riverkeeper's Paul
Gallay, opposing the project, said, " The Public
Service Commission's ruling confirms
what Rockland residents and Riverkeeper
supporters have known for years: Desalination
is flat-out unnecessary and wasteful, given
options for increased water conservation
and better management of existing supplies. "
tington Beach floodplains, the project will
require structural protection barriers such
as seawalls, groins, breakwaters and other
coastal armoring structures, triggering an additional
suite of costs and impacts to our state
and coast. "
Mixed Record
California's desalination interest comes naturally.
The state is suffering through a severe
four-year drought, while its entire western
boundary is the briny Pacific Ocean. Given
that ample evidence of far worse droughts
exists in the geologic history of the region,
California has long seen desalination as a
way to provide drinkable water, if only as a
backstop to normal supplies. Santa Barbara
last summer-in the midst of the current
drought-approved spending $55 million to
bring a mothballed desalination plant back
into service. That plant was built in the early
1990s, about the same time planning began
on the Carlsbad plant.
But Santa Barbara closed its plant in 1992,
when that drought abated. According to the
Los Angeles Times, the facility was never used
beyond testing. Mayor Helene Schneider told
the newspaper last year, " Desalination has
been a last resort. The way the drought has
continued these last four years, we are really
getting at that last resort. "
In late 2015 and early 2016-thanks in
large part to the current El Niño climate
event-California and the West Coast have
March 2016 | POWER
been deluged with rain at lower elevations
and heavy snows in the mountains, a key to
water availability in the dry summer months.
Whether the interest in desalination will continue
in the face of the El Niño effects is an
open question, but experts note that much
more rain and snow would be necessary to
get the state back to normal conditions.
Elsewhere in the U.S., desalination plans
have also encountered opposition. Last December,
the New York Public Service Commission
(PSC) rejected a plan by France's
Suez Environment water giant, which acquired
local water company United Water
New York, for a desalination plant in RockPower-Intense
Process
The major challenge for desalination is that
all current technologies require a lot of energy
(see sidebar). According to Raphael Semiat of
Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, it
takes 3.5 kWh to purify a cubic meter of seawater
using the most energy-efficient technology:
1.3 kWh to pump seawater to the plant
and 2.2 kWh for the RO process. That's why
big desalination plants almost always have
their own dedicated power plants-and most
of those plants are powered by fossil fuels.
That's where the alliance announced in
Paris-led by Masdar, the United Arab Emirates'
(UAE's) renewable energy company,
and the International Desalination Association-comes
in. The alliance said its " goal is
to seek solutions that will substantially reduce
the projected increase in CO2 emissions from
the desalination process, as global demand for
drinking water continues to grow. " The group
said it is seeking " a decrease in emissions
from 50 [million tons of CO2] up to as much
as 270 [million tons] per year by 2040. "
Government-owned Masdar last November
began development on a pilot seawater
Big desalination plants almost always have
their own dedicated power plants-and most
of those plants are powered by fossil fuels.
land County that would draw from the Hudson
River. United Water provides most of the
water for Rockland.
In 2006, the PSC ordered United Water to
come up with a way to produce more drinkable
water without disrupting the river. The
company offered a $150 million plan for a
desalination plant using brackish water not far
from the Indian Point nuclear power plant.
Local environmental groups formed the
Rockland Water Coalition to fight the projwww.powermag.com
desalination
plant using solar energy, which
the company says it will run at small scale
for 15 months. " These technologies have
never been used on a utility scale anywhere
in the world, " said Masdar. Just days after the
announcement at the Paris COP21 meeting,
the UAE and China signed a deal to work
together to combine Masdar's desalination
technology with low-cost solar photovoltaic
technology developed in China.
There are currently about 15,000 desalina23

http://www.powermag.com

POWER March 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER March 2016