Nizar Baraka Highlights Morocco's Desalination Potential

Rabat – Minister of Equipment and Water Nizar Baraka announced two new Moroccan desalination plants as he expounded on Morocco’s desalination potential. Morocco is launching new desalination plants in Laayoune and Sidi Ifni to take advantage of the “great assets” the country possesses when it comes to desalination, Baraka told Moroccan state media.

With two long coastlines and a growing arsenal of green energy solutions, Moroccan investment in desalination technology is a no-brainer according to Minister Baraka. Morocco’s investment in green energy over the past decades should allow the country to run desalination plants at a competitive cost to produce much-needed potable water.

Baraka highlighted that the upcoming Dakhla desalination plants will take advantage of local wind farms to produce drinking water and water for agriculture without the need to tap into unsustainable groundwater sources.

As climate change threatens the water supplies that Moroccan citizens and farmers depend on, desalination is increasingly seen as a potential solution to produce drinking water from sea water. Desalination uses either reverse osmosis or heating to turn seawater into drinking water. In recent years the technology has spread around the world, as costs fall and solutions to some of the technology’s waste and energy use concerns are increasingly addressed.

Desalination has two disadvantages, namely its waste product “brine,” overly salty wastewater that risks upsetting marine life, and the use of energy needed to convert seawater. Most scientists see the rbine question as a possible opportunity, as a means of harvesting salt from the ocean, while green energy is seen as a means of running desalination plants in a sustainable way.