Desalination is responsible for 200 million tons of CO2 emissions a year, significantly contributing to global warming. \u00a0Of course, global warming also contributes to drought highlighting\u00a0the water-energy nexus.<\/p>\n
Energy management is the most important aspect of reducing CO2 emissions associated with desalination. \u00a0Although Reverse Osmosis (RO) consumes 4 times less energy than thermal desalination processes, it still is responsible for about\u00a02kg of CO2\/M3, which is a lot. \u00a0The ability of desalination plants to reduce power consumption is limited by laws of physics<\/a>. \u00a0As the number of desalination plants\u00a0is expected to double by 2020, the desalination industry cannot add\u00a0a new source of greenhouse gas emissions as countries mobilize to curb them.<\/p>\n With good energy management and coordination with the electric utility, a Reverse Osmosis desalination plant can have net negative impact on greenhouse gas emissions. \u00a0With well-designed desalination plants, the flexibility provided to the utility allows more variable renewable energy (VRE) sources like solar PV and wind energy than\u00a0could\u00a0otherwise be managed on the grid.<\/p>\n Since water can be easily stored (unlike electricity), flexible desalination is a form of energy storage.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Desalination is responsible for 200 million tons of CO2 emissions a year, significantly contributing to global warming. \u00a0Of course, global warming also contributes to drought highlighting\u00a0the water-energy nexus. Energy management is the most important aspect of reducing CO2 emissions associated with desalination. \u00a0Although Reverse Osmosis (RO) consumes 4 times less energy than thermal desalination processes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35,49],"tags":[53,50,52,51,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13320,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13315\/revisions\/13320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/renewabledesalination.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}