Christopher Gasson, publisher of Global Water Intelligence, sat down with Samantha Keck during the IDA Congress in Dubai and shared his insights on present and future of the desalination industry
Hunkering down on the sofa in the IDA Congress press room, Christopher Gasson proclaimed: “This is the home of desalination. This is the place where it all started.” The desalination industry’s fortunes in this region have always tied inextricably to the price of oil, the region’s main revenue earner.
When the oil price was low, nobody paid much attention; but the spectacular increase in oil prices resulted in unprecedented economic growth and in the past five years, the region’s desalination industry too has grown, especially on the membrane side. “If you were to look at the main water providers in this region five years ago, 70-80% of the water would have come from Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) distillation. But today, there is not only tremendous growth in the industry, but for the first time in 10 years, there is a lot more of membrane desalination happening in this region,” said Gasson. Commenting on the mindset change, Gasson said: “Back in the 1990s, when a membrane desalination plant failed in Bahrain, everyone shied away from membrane technology. Even though the failure had occurred in the pre-treatment and not the membrane, the failure was a huge catastrophe for membrane desalination concept in the region. The company that made the membrane eventually exited the market.
But now the confidence in RO desalination is back.” However, Gasson also pointed out it will be a while before RO desalination reaches the size and scale of thermal desalination.
The thermal side of the desalination story has also seen its fair share of improvements, with technology improvements steering thermal desalination towards Multiple Effect Distillation (MED). Gasson said: “There is a greater market share today for MED. Historically, MED was not applied to more than 40,000 m3/day capacity due to the lack of economies of scale. But in the last few years, the improvements in MED technology have enabled economies of scale to be achieved. The second largest desalination plant in the world, Jubail, with a capacity of 800,000 m3/day uses MED technology.”
However, Gasson was emphatic that the future of desalination lies with RO as its energy requirement is much less compared to thermal desalination. The highest energy consumption is by MSF which requires roughly 3kWhr/m3 of electrical energy excluding the thermal energy it consumes. RO, on the other hand, requires around 4kWhr/m3 of electricity to produce water. “We must remember that outside of this region, membrane desalination is the dominant technology, rounding up two-thirds of the market. The rest of the world cares more about energy costs,” said the GWI Publisher.
Public versus private ownership
Moving on to the changing nature of ownership in the desalination industry, Gasson pointed out that the privatisation trend is growing in the region, where even as recently as 2002, public water authorities set up and operated desalination plants.
In fact, the GCC countries have been moving steadily towards privatisation, with Abu Dhabi showing leadership in this regard. Gasson continued, “I think the main reason why a lot of governments moved towards privatisation in the region is because of the poor performance by the public water companies. This move has seen the power of government utilities gradually giving way to private sector companies. Some private companies have actually done extremely well. For example, ACWA Power International of Saudi Arabia has come out of nowhere. In 2003, they had like seven employees, and today, they are employing thousands. ACWA Power has grown from the new kid on the block to having been contracted to produce around 60% of the capacity of Shuqaiq. And their success is not only attributed to the growth of the desalination market. In order to catch up to the big boys, ACWA Power actually demonstrated some real innovation in their design and thinking.”
Moving back to the public versus private debate, Gasson noted that privatisation has not-so-obvious benefits too. He continued: “Certainly if you look at Saudi Arabia, privatisation has been triggered by the need for better performance. There, the private sector not only takes care of the desalination plants but also the running of the water distribution networks to reduce the high incidence of leakages, typically between 10 – 20%. In many cities, the private sector is also the main motivation to provide 24/7 water. What the authorities have actually discovered is that when you have 24/7 water, water consumption actually goes down.”
When blue actually becomes green
Gasson claimed that the desalination industry is sitting up and taking notice of its impact on the environment. He said “If you came to the IDA Congress six years ago, there was hardly any interest at all in the environmental impact of desalination. The industry has since become a lot more conscious of that. I think we are seeing technologies being developed to offset the environmental impact as a result of this growing awareness as well as the new regulations introduced for desalination processes. In Australia, for instance, all the desalination plants have been built with extreme intakes and outfalls so that the marine life is left undisturbed. In fact in some ways, you can argue that marine life has been enhanced by the presence of the desalination plant. The plant provides structure to the sea bed and attracts all sorts of creatures that were not there before.”
With the setting up of the IDA environmental taskforce in the region, Gasson believes that environmental issues unique to this part of the world would be dealt with in a more focused manner. He said: “There are two main environmental impacts from desalination plants. One is the intake which is the impingement and entrapment of marine life. On the output side, you have the chemicals used in desalination that is washed out to sea. One of the main problems in the Gulf is that the water here is quite shallow. And with hotter temperatures in this part of the world, the water tends to get more saline. If you have a lot of discharge into warm shallow water, it might not mix as well as it should.”
The next golden egg
At the opening of the IDA Congress, Gasson announced that the total capacity of desalination plants now online has increased 12.2% year-on-year, to almost 60 million m3/day. This is the fastest rate of industry growth since the early 1980s. Of this, the most significant growth factor has been seawater desalination. From the last IDA Congress in November 2007, the installed capacity of seawater desalination plants has grown by almost 30%, to approximately 36 million m3/day.
Gasson pointed out that the reasons for this growth are several, one of which is the rise in demand for water not being met by declining non-renewable ground water. The sea offers a guaranteed supply of water; moreover, seawater desalination has also become more affordable in comparison with the alternatives. So will this region continue to drive the desalination industry forward? Gasson answered that this region may not remain the driver of industry growth has in the past. With the regional economy having taken a battering, many projects have been delayed or cancelled. Many of the small- and medium-scale desalination plants have been put on hold because the off-shore developments they were meant to serve have not materialised yet.
In the same breath, he highlighted the emergence of North Africa where countries are considering desalination on a large scale for the first time. “Previously, there had only been Sharm El-Sheikh, where desalination was on a small scale to serve a hotel. Libya had historically relied on a man-made river, now they are looking at supplementing this river with seawater desalination. And in Morocco, they have plans for a very large desalination plant that will change the way Casablanca is supplied. The plan will see to it that Casablanca no longer takes water from the South but from the sea,” said Gasson.
He also named India and China as strong markets to watch out for. “Traditional markets like Spain and Algeria are cooling down for a variety of reasons. Istanbul probably needs to start thinking about desalination seriously. There are also new markets opening up in the US too. I think we are coming to a stage where countries cannot delay addressing the water scarcity issue any longer,” said Gasson.
Never the twain shall meet?
After having deliberated much on the supply side of things, what about the other end of the pole? Gasson laughed and said: “There are two ways to deal with the issue of sustainability of water. Either one can improve the technology to increase supply or one can change behaviour to manage demand. One significant implication of technological improvements is that they don’t encourage a change in demand behaviour. Consumption per head in this region tends to be over a 1000 litres a day. Ideally, it should be brought down to around 200 litres a day. But getting through with the necessary behavioural changes will be very hard. In Saudi Arabia, for example, you will need to introduce a much higher tariff to discourage water wastage. People should not expect to have beautiful green gardens in the desert. But the real impact on demand management will be in context of agricultural use rather than domestic use. And that problem is on a global scale. Why should people grow alfalfa for cows? When you have so little water to be turning that water into food is crazy, especially when you could import food at a much cheaper price.”
