Desalination, water scarcity and freshwater solutions

[wjfox]

This thread is for news and discussions focused primarily on desalination technologies and projects around the world. Desalination refers to the process of removing salt from seawater or brackish water to produce freshwater, typically involving membranes and reverse osmosis.

This thread also covers the challenge of water scarcity more generally – including drought, declining groundwater, growing demand and related political/social issues. Please share relevant articles, updates and commentary on how societies may secure reliable freshwater supplies in a warming and increasingly water-stressed world.

[wjfox]

World's first subsea desalination plant launches in 2026

As water scarcity intensifies worldwide, a Norwegian startup plans to turn the deep ocean into an unlikely source of freshwater. Flocean expects to launch its first commercial subsea desalination system later this year.

18th January 2026

Freshwater shortages already affect billions of people, and climate change continues to strain rivers, reservoirs and groundwater supplies. Many coastal regions sit beside vast oceans yet struggle to secure clean drinking water in an affordable and sustainable way. Desalination offers one possible solution, but traditional plants often consume large amounts of energy, occupy valuable coastal land and raise concerns over environmental impacts. These challenges have driven interest in alternative approaches that could deliver freshwater more efficiently.

Founded in 2024 and based in Norway, Flocean has developed a radically different way to remove salt from seawater. Rather than building large facilities on land, the company places its systems hundreds of metres below the ocean surface. Flocean's approach has already attracted international attention, with Time magazine selecting its technology as one of the Best Inventions of 2025.

The core idea behind subsea desalination is surprisingly simple. At depth, the pressure of seawater increases naturally, reaching levels that conventional reverse osmosis systems normally generate using powerful pumps. Land-based desalination plants must expend large amounts of electricity to force water through membranes that separate salt from freshwater. Flocean allows the ocean itself to freely supply much of that pressure, reducing the energy required to produce drinkable water.

According to the company, its subsea systems can reduce capital costs per unit of capacity by a factor of seven to eight, while cutting energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. The area of coastal land required for such infrastructure is reduced by a massive 95%, easing land acquisition and permitting delays. Chemical pre-treatment is eliminated entirely, and waste brine can simply disperse at depth without toxic additives, avoiding the concentrated surface discharges typical of conventional plants.

Read more: https://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/202 ... n-2026.htm

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

Water Rights Have Become Water Wrongs
By Erik Molvar
April 16 , 2026

Introduction:

(Counterpunch) Across most of the arid West, snowpack is low, rainfall is scarce, and residents are staring down the barrel of another year of major drought. Water levels are dropping, native fishes have become endangered, and a battle royale is heating up between western states to decide whose water uses will go unfulfilled.

Right now, water is allocated based on Wild-West-era laws that allowed the first settler who filed a claim to get priority rights to use that water. You could claim as much water as you could use – or squander – with the proviso that any unused water at the end of the season could be hijacked by a downstream water user who wanted more, and that portion of the original water right would be lost forever. Almost always, the first user was a rancher or farmer, because they arrived before the growth and incorporation of towns and cities. This led to today’s absurd reality that the least-important water use (from a societal standpoint) — feed to subsidize cattle in arid environments where they otherwise couldn’t survive — takes precedence over every other use including keeping enough water in rivers and streams for fish to survive.

The Colorado River, which flows through the Grand Canyon, is a prime example of this absurdity. Colorado River flows into Lake Powell are projected to be only 22 percent of normal this year, and could hit record lows. This giant reservoir was built as a “water storage savings account” to allow water to be accumulated during wet years and released during dry years so Upper Colorado River Basin states could meet their obligations under the multi-state Colorado River Compact. But spreading out and slowing down the river maximized water loss to evaporation. And the savings account is already overdrawn, with reservoir levels approaching deadpool levels at which hydropower at the dams can no longer be generated. This scenario occurs ever-more-frequently as climate change produces longer and more frequent droughts. Clearly, there is not enough water in the Colorado River to keep both Lake Powell and Lake Mead at levels that allow for hydropower generation and that prevent dam failure.

Read more here: https://www.counterpunch.org/author/erik-molvar/