New cities & SEZ will emerge on desert coasts thanks to cheap solar energy and desalination
By George ELIOT Technology is starting to revolutionise the desert. The combination of abundant and cheap solar power plus energy-efficient seawater desalination will transform the world's desert coasts over the next 10-20 years. This transformation will be of a scale that rivals the development revolution that the air conditioner brought to the world's subtropical, tropical and equatorial regions (such as Texas, Florida and Singapore, respectively). Any stretch of ocean coast is by definition prime real estate as long as people can live there. So far the vast majority of the world's desert coasts have remained... deserted. But not for long: as soon as fresh water becomes available (which is a function of the cost of electricity that can be used for seawater desalination going down by 90% over a decade), new cities and special economic zones (SEZ) will emerge. Where small scale diesel power plants were used before, "solar-desal" plants are emerging to take their...