With climate change beginning to affect water supplies, what can be done?
A panel at the recent Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy summit attempted to answer that question. In agriculture, it will take both better breeding—for more water efficient crops—and smarter irrigation. Our power plants could send less steam into the sky with hybrid air-and-water cooling systems. And local, state and federal governments could begin to reform an often hidebound water rights system. Not to mention that we'd all better get comfortable with the idea of reusing water over and over again.
On the other hand, as a new $1 billion facility rising on the California coast may prove, maybe we just need to increase the water supply. The Poseidon desalination plant aims to turn seawater into hundreds of thousands of gallons of freshwater annually. The only problem is: it's expensive and it requires a lot of energy. And producing energy requires water, which requires energy to clean, which, well, lather, rinse, repeat.
—David Biello
