General Electric Co. has a growing water treatment unit, which has just announced that it will partner with the Algerian Energy Company to build a major seawater desalination plant. The facility will help supply the country's capital city of Algiers with much-needed additional drinking water. Costs for desalination have dropped significantly, and the method is part of the future solution to global water supply challenges. More here from the Stamford Advocate, via AP.

General Electric Co. plans to help build what would be one of the world's largest water desalination plants, part of a growing interest in projects to address global water shortages. GE...has invested more than $3 billion into its nearly three-year-old water treatment business. The $270 million plant in Algeria is the company's first major drinking-water project.

"I think it pleases the research community that a large corporation has stepped up and has the vision to see out 20 years," said Ron Linsky, executive director of the National Water Research Institute. "Desalination of sea water is an important option that the world has. The recognition of the value of water is increasingly on the radar of people around the world."

Nearly 100 desalination projects are in the development stages in the United States, but environmental permitting and other issues need to be resolved, Linsky said.

With water scarcity a growing global problem, GE says desalination is the wave of the future. "The technology is getting better and the cost is getting lower so it's really becoming a viable solution," said Colin Sabol, chief marketing officer for GE Infrastructure, Water & Process Technologies.....The cost of desalination has dropped from $20 to $3.50 per 1,000 gallons over the past 15 years, Sabol said.

Water desalination has its critics. The California Coastal Commission warned two years ago that allowing desalination plants to proliferate could threaten marine life and turn what has long been considered a common good - the ocean - into a commodity. A pioneering desalination plant in Tampa, Fla., has run into problems, such as salt filters clogging too quickly.

Linsky denied the plants are harmful to marine life. He attributed the problems in Tampa to growing pains. Desalination has not been widely used in the United States even though plants have long operated in the Middle East, he said.

....GE expects to build three or four major desalination projects annually. Desalination is a $5 billion market that is growing about 15 percent annually, company officials said.

Al Bawaba reports the GE-Algerian joint venture will provide 53 million gallons per day of potable water from the sea. Construction is scheduled to start next month, and last two years.

Yankee ingenuity and Yankee capital helping supply badly-needed drinking water to a North African, Muslim country. Yes, I think I like that.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at June 27, 2005 12:23 PM