Water consumption of 550 Liters per person per day as compared to global average of 250. Friends, I am not talking of Canada or US this is the position of UAE. People in deserts use more water than those living in greener surroundings. No wonder World Future Energy Summit ( WFES ) was held recently as a part of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week & many of our Ambassadors have attended the same.

A major thought process have been evoked in the recently concluded WFES and that is to reduce the energy footprint of water desalination. Majority of water is generated by desalination as groundwater resources in UAE are negligible. Desalination consumes a lot of energy, despite Abu Dhabi using natural gas, other emirates use Diesel for desalination. This generates greenhouse gases harmful to environment.

Dr Abdullah Al Alshaikh, the IDA (International Desalination Association) president and deputy governor for planning and development of the Saline Water Conversion Corporation in Saudi Arabia, said ?government support was necessary to encourage the use of solar power in desalination in the Arabian Gulf. I think it needs some subsidies in the beginning.?

?Using Solar power as per existing technology will need huge space. To have one cubic metre per day of desalinated water, it would take you 50 square metres or more of solar panels?. Remarked Dr Corrado Sommariva, managing director of ILF Consulting Engineers in Abu Dhabi.

?This will have mammoth development & engineering costs?. One of the measures discussed was that ?Government can create a small market for renewable energy technologies?. ?Policymakers should have the same strategy here for water. They have to create a niche market for water whereby every developer must have a portfolio, maybe of 1 per cent or 2 per cent of their water produced in a renewable manner?,

said Dr Sommariva, who is former president of the IDA.

Masdar city in Abu Dhabi has taken the first step to build desalination plants using clean energy. They are planning to build a large scale facility by 2020.

Apart from this possible technologies are Forward Osmosis, low-temperature distillation and membrane distillation.

?By the end of the year, we should have the first feedback in terms of reliability, confirmation of the energy footprint, costs of operation,? said Dr Sommariva.

UAE is taking all possible steps to reduce energy footprint of water desalination. I hope they come up with a viable solution for the benefit of all humanity.

Article Source: http://www.thenational.ae/uae/environment/reducing-energy-footprint-of-water-desalination-is-priority-say-experts#ixzz2sErKOaYP