desalinisation

Sydney also has a desalinisation plant. Like Victoria, the NSW government copped flak for building this as the drought broke as it finished.

The problem with our desalinisation plant wasn't that it was built, it's that it wasn't made a 'roll-out' system, paying for and bringing online sections of the plant as we needed them. Instead we paid for the whole thing as a job lot.

The potential desalinisation this could lead to is also pretty exciting

People love to complain about the Sydney desalinisation plant investment as it's usage has been limited. Given the importance of water and the number of times Sydney has been in drought seems a short sighted view.

Saudi Arabia actually had a number of projects for this kind of thing, but they were focused on dairy and grain intensive farming propped up by "fossil water" that was either extracted from wells or from oil-fuelled desalinisation. It didn't last long.

So depending on exactly how the numbers work out, this might mean slightly cheaper, more labor-intensive desalinisation plants, but we're not covering any deserts just yet.

I wonder if there's an opportunity for a combined seawater desalinisation and lithium extraction plant, if they could have complementary processes.