Elon Musk speaks in favor of desalination at World Water Forum

From May 18 to 25 this year. 10 was held in Bali. World Water Forum – the largest meeting of its kind of international experts, politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs related to the water industry. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, known for his bold investments in cutting-edge technology, was a guest at the Forum. According to him, the future of global water management looks optimistic.

World Water Forum: cooperation first and foremost

The theme of this year’s Forum was Water for Shared Prosperity. At the launch, Indonesian President Joko Widodo stressed that, in order to overcome the pending challenges of water resource deficits, we must work together at the global level. He also warned that by 2050, 500 million small farm owners, who produce 80 percent of the of the world’s food, will experience the severe effects of drought.

The Forum adopted a declaration on international cooperation and an accompanying program to subsidize 113 water and wastewater projects worth $9.4 billion. They also established World Lakes Day and agreed to establish a center of excellence for water and climate security. In addition, a Tropical Seaweed Research Center (ITRC) has opened in Bali for international technology transfer in the seaweed cultivation sector.

The World Water Forum also brought a new international commitment to further consolidate river basin management at a high political level. The Twin River Basins Initiative (TBI) is designed to facilitate the exchange of experience and capacity building for integrated water resources management at the national and transboundary levels.

Elon Musk advocates desalination

The Forum program included a speech by Elon Musk, who came to Indonesia to promote the use of the Starlink satellite to improve connectivity to remote areas. His message was simple and short: water scarcity can be solved with technologies that are already available.

In his speech, Elon Musk jokingly suggested that if aliens visited our planet, they might call it “Planet Water” due to the dominance of water, which accounts for about 70 percent. Earth’s surface, with 30 percent. land. From this it follows that the Earth’s water potential is significant, even though most of this water is salty and not directly drinkable. However, the problem of access to fresh water can be solved through desalination technologies, which until recently were too costly to be used on a large scale.

Elon Musk pointed out that the issue of ensuring access to fresh water is currently limited mainly to energy and transportation issues. In doing so, he emphasized the underestimated potential of solar energy, which has significantly depreciated over the past two decades. In addition, the price of the batteries needed to store this energy has decreased tenfold over the past five years.

According to Musk, a slightly different solution will be needed for each country and region, but the low cost of desalination means that it will not be a problem to provide adequate amounts of fresh water to cover individual consumption or hydroponic growing centers, where evaporation losses are minimized.

We have further breakthroughs in desalination efficiency, and I think there is a great water future and a great future of sustainable energy sources ahead of us,” Elon Musk said optimistically.

Voices of criticism in Musk’s direction

However, not everyone sees the future as rosy as the SpaceX CEO. Carlos Cosin, former president of the International Desalination Association, pointed out Musk ‘s lack of any new ideas. Arguments such as the key role of desalination in combating the water crisis and the need to use renewable energy sources to implement the process have been raised for 20 years.

Muhammad Jamil of the Indonesian NGO network JATAM criticized Musk’s proposal in the context of the materials needed to build solar power plants on the scale required for global water desalination. Acquiring them would involve expanding metal mining, which already threatens the world’s virgin forests. Greenpeace representative Hadi Priyanto, on the other hand, pointed out that while his organization agrees with the need for desalination and the huge potential of solar energy in this area, the environmental costs associated with, for example, the additional waste from photovoltaic installations must be taken into account. “The effectiveness of desalination equipment requires further research,” he said. – Priyanto added.

Other critics have pointed out that Elon Musk’s optimistic scenario is only feasible in developed countries. For less wealthy countries, raising capital to invest in desalination infrastructure will be a huge hurdle.

Photo. main: World Water Forum