Desalination of seawater is becoming essential as demand for freshwater expands well beyond the capacity of current reserves to sustain it. But on its own, desalination threatens to help feed the catastrophic climate change that is helping to accelerate water scarcity around the globe. 

Desalination is notoriously energy intensive, and energy consumption represents 50% to 60% of total operation costs for a plant. For early adopters of the technology, such as Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states in the Middle East and North Africa, that wasn’t a problem.