What is the goal? Is it to consume a particular resource? Is it to produce a particular product?
Yes, West Texas has abundant light and should have solar panels. Then you can ask what to do with the energy. You could just sell it to the grid. The advent of solar power will mean large daily swings in the price of energy. If you have a use of energy that can run in the mornings, that will benefit from this. Desalination is one such application. Colocating it with the solar plant has some advantage of reducing the negotiation with the grid, but that isn’t theoretically necessary. This doesn’t seem to me like a good enough reason to do things in West Texas.
It hadn’t occurred to me that brackish water is a resource. If brackish water has 1⁄10 as much salt as seawater, then it takes 1⁄10 as much energy (I think that is true both in theory and in practice, where practice is 10% efficient for both). So if you must desalinate water, it is a resource. I’m skeptical of desalination for agriculture. It’s quite expensive, even at 1⁄10 the price. Whereas humans consume very little water and desalination for residential use is cheap, comparable to the cost of distributing the water. Let people in Los Angeles water their yards as much as they like. If people want to live in West Texas, they can water their yards, too. But this isn’t a reason to live there.
If the goal is to produce food, is this the optimal use of energy? Maybe better to make fertilizer and export it to places that have their own water.
If the goal is to promote decentralization, then maybe you don’t want to export fertilizer. But you probably want to think more about what you mean by decentralization (eg, self-sufficiency to survive trade decline vs escape from political oppression).
What is the goal? Is it to consume a particular resource? Is it to produce a particular product?
Yes, West Texas has abundant light and should have solar panels. Then you can ask what to do with the energy. You could just sell it to the grid. The advent of solar power will mean large daily swings in the price of energy. If you have a use of energy that can run in the mornings, that will benefit from this. Desalination is one such application. Colocating it with the solar plant has some advantage of reducing the negotiation with the grid, but that isn’t theoretically necessary. This doesn’t seem to me like a good enough reason to do things in West Texas.
It hadn’t occurred to me that brackish water is a resource. If brackish water has 1⁄10 as much salt as seawater, then it takes 1⁄10 as much energy (I think that is true both in theory and in practice, where practice is 10% efficient for both). So if you must desalinate water, it is a resource. I’m skeptical of desalination for agriculture. It’s quite expensive, even at 1⁄10 the price. Whereas humans consume very little water and desalination for residential use is cheap, comparable to the cost of distributing the water. Let people in Los Angeles water their yards as much as they like. If people want to live in West Texas, they can water their yards, too. But this isn’t a reason to live there.
If the goal is to produce food, is this the optimal use of energy? Maybe better to make fertilizer and export it to places that have their own water.
If the goal is to promote decentralization, then maybe you don’t want to export fertilizer. But you probably want to think more about what you mean by decentralization (eg, self-sufficiency to survive trade decline vs escape from political oppression).