Desalination and low carbon development

One of the most interesting things within our project have been looking at the view on desalination's environmental externalities. Especially in terms of energy consumption to drive the processes of desalination.

We are looking at the case study of Spain for our thesis and it is one of the countries that has set out to considerably increase it's desalination capacity in near future. Already now being one of the leading countries within desalination, the capacity of Spain is set to nearly double according to their national plans. I think it will be really interesting to see the developments within this in the light of EU's low carbon development plans.

There are already a number of test plants using renewable energies for water production, but so far most plants still fuel the processes from the grid, and hence the fossil fuel energy for the most part. How can this trend be changed and what are the realistic options for increasing the use of renewable energy for desalination is what me and my group are currently working on.

I know this is a narrow niche, but if somebody has any experience with this, you are welcome to mail and share experiences. Otherwise, there is also an interesting report that has recently produced for the European Commission in the future impacts of desalination on the EU energy use:

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/quantity/pdf/desalination.pdf