Reducing Costs of Climate Adaptation: New Evidence from a High Desert

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4713568/v1

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Reducing Costs of Climate Adaptation: New Evidence from a High Desert

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4713568/v1

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This study investigates the hypothesis that seawater desalination technology is too costly for widespread benefit for irrigated agriculture. An integrated optimization model is developed to test this hypothesis by assessing the benefits of incorporating affordable desalinated seawater into local urban water supplies, revealing a gain for both cities and farm water users. Using the Rio Grande Basin high desert region of North America as a case study, the economic performance of various water shortage sharing strategies is investigated under current and projected desalination costs, with broader implications for other arid regions internationally. The findings reveal that water trading between agricultural and urban sectors significantly reduces the cost of adapting to climate-induced water stress. Additionally, the availability of affordable desalinated water further enhances these cost reductions, demonstrating its potential to lower the cost of climate adaptation in arid regions worldwide where competition for water is most intense.

Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental social sciences

Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental social sciences/Climate change adaptation

Climate adaptation

water resources

hydrology

economics

policy analysis

4.1 Problem

In recent years, several unprecedented challenges internationally have been experienced by climate managers and by climate stakeholders. Regarding water resources, these challenges are characterized by escalating water demands, falling supplies, and emerging conflicts that challenge sustainable prosperity.^1–3 Climate change has significantly elevated water scarcity in numerous regions worldwide, including China, North Africa, the Middle East, the Asian subcontinent, and arid regions of the western USA. This scarcity elevates the need for multidisciplinary approaches to integrate economic and ecological challenges imposed by climate water stress.^4,5 Growing water scarcity has become an important constraint on economic development and a threat to livelihoods in many arid regions. Since the 1980s, research on water scarcity has attracted increasing amounts of attention from scientists and policy analysts.⁶ Nearly one-fourth of the world's population lacks safe and effective access to safe drinking water, and workable measures to supply safe affordable drinking water remain elusive.⁷ This growing crisis, amplified by population growth and the impacts of climate change, underscores the need to manage climate-induced water scarcity with interdisciplinary approaches.⁸

The challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2050 remains a significant issue facing the world’s food and water security planners. Continuing population and food demand growth means that international demand for food will increase at least to that year. Elevated competition for land and water will affect human capacity to produce food with available primary resources,⁹ which will become an especially important challenge in arid regions worldwide.¹⁰

4.2 Previous Work

Despite growing research on the costs of climate change adaptation,¹ there is a notable scarcity of systematic investigations into policy measures aimed at alleviating the economic burdens of climate-induced water stress. While some notable studies have explored climate adaptation strategies,^11–14 including detailed examinations of irrigation water conservation opportunities^15–17 and urban water management challenges under future climate stress,^18–21 little attention has been given to the potential economic performance of technological advance in innovative water supply methods for controlling these adaptation costs.

4.3 Gaps

Many of the works described above have investigated the technical and economic feasibility of climate adaptation through various measures. However, scant attention has been given to economic gains that could be realized from emerging technologies in mitigating these costs. Notably, despite its widely recognized high current production and delivery costs to arid regions, advancements in desalination technologies, especially seawater desalination, might hold promise in this regard.^6,7

4.4 Objectives

This paper seeks to fill the above gap described by assessing effective policy responses to climate-induced water stress, with a specific focus on the economic viability of seawater desalination technologies in highly water-stressed regions facing considerable competition for water. Leveraging the recently developed Agriculture, Urban, Dynamic Adaptation Model (ADAM), described in Methods and Materials, this paper investigates current and prospective costs of delivering these technologies to water users in regions where competition for water is high, providing valuable insights for scientists, policymakers and stakeholders.^3,4,6,7

Surprisingly, the hypothesis that seawater desalination technology will not produce widespread benefits for irrigated agriculture and thus cannot contribute to food security is partly rejected from this work’s evidence. The strongest rejection occurs when desal products are delivered to the high desert at the lowest price, considered here to be $1232 per acre foot for Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA and $597 per acre foot for Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. This hypothesis is partly rejected at the medium desal price of $1272 per acre foot for Albuquerque and $637 for Las Cruces. Low and medium desal prices would require heavy government subsidies. The hypothesis is not rejected when desal users must pay the full unsubsidized price of $2405 for Albuquerque and $3371 for Las Cruces. That is, the default hypothesis is rejected with more strength as seawater desal becomes more affordable for urban users through heavier government subsidies or through technical advance.

Results show potentially favorable economic gains to irrigated agriculture in North America’s high desert region of the Rio Grande Basin (Fig. 1) to the extent that desalinated seawater can be made affordable for urban uses. It does not need to be affordable to irrigation water users. The results are based on the formulation and application of the recently developed integrated dynamic optimization model ADAM to the problem of sustainable water management in this basin, with potential applications in other arid regions. Model and data details are provided in Methods and Materials.

Using ADAM, our results show that water trading between agricultural areas in two irrigation districts, Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) New Mexico²² and Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) New Mexico,²³ and two urban areas, Albuquerque, New Mexico²⁴ and Las Cruces, New Mexico,²⁵ can significantly reduce the cost of adapting to climate water stress compared to a default proportional sharing of shortages when shortages occur. This default method for shortage sharing is a common approach for handling shortages internationally. The results of model runs from ADAM show that economic gains from trading are more pronounced in the face of greater affordability of imported desalinated seawater combined with greater institutional capacity for trading water for cash when shortages occur. This is a significant finding in that little research to date has examined the hydrologic and economic impact of this integrated package of institutional and technological change.

5.1 Water Allocations

5.1.1 Allocation Summary

Figure 2 shows the water use by water supply condition (historical and drought), economic sector (agriculture and urban), water source (regional and desal), policy for handling shortages (with and without water trading), and desal price (low, medium, and high). Drought conditions are defined as climate water stress that reduces overall regional supplies to 70% of historically observed use. Regional supplies are defined as those used from regional streams and aquifers in the Rio Grande Basin. Full supply (observed) use is shown in dark blue: an estimated 326,585 acre feet per year for farms and 150,097 acre feet per year for cities. The results are averages for the study period (2018–2021), with year-by-year details provided in the supplementary information Appendix A GAMS® code. The figure shows that for all sectors, sources, adaptation policies, desal availability, and desal prices, use is lower under drought conditions than historically observed use. However, the extent to which drought water use is reduced varies widely according to hydrological, technical, economic, and institutional conditions.

5.1.2 Farms Never Use Desal

For the drought conditions considered in this work, farms never directly use imported desalinated water to adapt to shortages in our high-desert study region of North America’s Rio Grande Basin, regardless of its price or availability. This is shown in all of the first four sets of bars from the left (agriculture). The economic value of water in agriculture²⁶ is too low in the study region to make desalinated water profitable for farming at any price considered here.

It should be noted that under the right conditions, seawater desalination has been used for irrigation in some parts of the world, particularly in arid regions where freshwater resources are limited and where there is a high need for food self-sufficiency in the face of unreliable food imports for political or military reasons. Examples of seawater desal use for irrigation include Israel,²⁷ Saudi Arabia,²⁸ and Spain.^29,30 These regions have taken advantage of advances in seawater desalination technology to make it an economically viable solution for irrigation, despite the high energy costs and environmental outcomes associated with the process.

5.1.3 Use of Regionally Sourced Water: Farms v Cities

A comparison of the first and second sets of bars on the left shows that farms use more water from regional sources (rivers and aquifers) when water trading^31–33 occurs and when desal is available and affordable for urban use than when desal is neither available nor affordable. Farms use growing amounts of water from regional sources motivated by farm-city trading as desal prices fall from their highest to lowest level. In fact, at desal’s highest price (Methods and Materials), farms use the same water from regional sources as when desal is unavailable, namely 187,455 acre feet per year under drought conditions.

The second set of bars from the left shows that farm-city water trading when facing drought combined with affordable urban desal elevates regionally sourced farm water use to its highest level at 312,423 acre feet, nearly as high as the historically observed use of 326,581 acre feet. This remarkable result occurs because a large reduction in urban use from regional sources is motivated by affordable urban access to desal. These special conditions allow farms to use 124,968 acre feet (312,423–187,455) more water with affordable urban desal combined with trading than without both. That is, even though farms cannot afford to directly use desal in this region, their regional water use and incomes benefit considerably from urban access to affordable desal.

Under these conditions, urban use from regional sources is low at the lowest desal price, for which urban use from regional sources with trading amounts to a mere 21,255 acre feet. This considerable pressure taken off regional sources by urban users occurs because most of the urban demand in this study region is satisfied if affordable desalinated water is made available for its use. The results show that farms use nearly twice the amount of water from regional sources through trading when urban desalinated water is available and affordable (312,423 acre feet) than when it is available but expensive (187,455 acre feet).

5.1.4 Without Trading: Farms vs. Cities

Figure 2 reveals a significant loss of flexibility for handling water shortage for both farms and cities when water trading is unavailable as a shortage adaptation measure. This loss in flexibility is seen by comparing the third and fourth set of bars from the left (farms) and the seventh and eighth set (cities). That comparison shows that without trading, farms uses just over twice the water (228,607 acre feet) compared to our two cities (105,072 acre feet) when shortage occurs. These use patterns are identical both with and without access to desal at all desal prices. Clearly, nobody benefits from access to desal at any price when trading cannot occur to take advantage of urban desal availability. Each user is constrained to use 0.70 of their historical use (dark blue bars) under all conditions when trading is not an option for moving water from lower valued to higher valued uses^34–36 because a lack of trading locks water into existing use patterns.

5.1.5 With Trading without Desal: Farms v. Cities

Comparing the first (farms) and fifth (cities) sets of bars from the left in Fig. 2, trading alone without desal available reduces agricultural use to 57 percent of its base level, from 326,581 to 187,455 acre feet, while urban use is limited to a much smaller reduction, maintaining 97 percent of base (146,223 from 150,097), a modest 3,873 acre foot reduction in use. Clearly, even without access to desalinated water, trading opportunities alone move large amounts of water from farms to cities.

5.2 Economic Outcomes

5.2.1 Outcome Summary

Figure 3 shows the economic gains from various drought adaptation measures compared to a base policy of drought adaptation without trading using the default proportional sharing of shortages. The results are shown by sector (farms and cities) and desal price (low, medium, high) in $US per year, averaged for 2018–2021. The total average annual economic welfare under historical water supply conditions (not shown) is approximately $847 million for farms (income) and $393 million for urban users (producer and consumer surplus).

5.2.2 Mutual Gains from Trade

Mutual gains from trade^37–41 are economic gains received by both farms and cities from engaging in voluntary trading to adapt to climate-stressed water shortages. It involves trading water for cash to smooth adaptation to water shortages, for which a default shortage sharing system in many parts of the world involves simple proportional sharing of shortages. The mutual gains from trade for this work refer to the idea that when farms and cities engage in voluntary exchange of water for cash, both can benefit from the transaction. The principle of mutual gains from trade highlights that the trade of water for cash when facing shortage is not a zero-sum game but a positive sum game where both farms and cities end up better off than they were under a default alternative of proportional sharing of shortages.

When selling or renting water for cash, the value of the cash gained is greater for the receiver of cash than is the economic value of water lost from that sector’s reduced water use. For this paper, the gains from trade are measured as the increase in farm income for farmers and the increase in consumer plus producer surplus for urban water users compared to the more limited economic welfare that would occur under proportional sharing for handling shortages. The numerical results are described below, summarizing these gains from trade as well as the gains from accessing affordable desal.

5.2.3 Scale of Gains: Farms v. Cities

Figure 3 shows that trading produces benefits for cities approximately 5.2 times as high as for farms when both trading and desal are available at a low price and a slightly larger 7.3 times as high when desal is unavailable. For both cases, cities experience greater economic gains than farms because of the considerably greater economic value of water in urban areas compared to farm use.^42–45 Nevertheless, farms gain uniformly from trading with cites under all desal price and availability options.

5.2.4 Gains from Trade without Affordable Desal: Farms vs. Cities

The figure also shows that farm income gains from trade without desal access are rather modest at $4.464 million, while urban economic gains are much greater at $32.750 million. Nevertheless, despite the modest scale of the farm income gains, those gains are sufficiently large to motivate farms to move 41,152 acre feet more (228,607 minus 187,455 acre feet) out of farming into city use than would have occurred lacking both trading and desal. The quantity of water moved is shown in Fig. 2’s water use table. Modest market trading incentives available at the right time can move large amounts of water to where it is economically more valued.

5.2.5 Gains from Trade with Affordable Desal: Farms vs. Cities

Results also show that urban economic gains resulting from available affordable desal is approximately 5.1 times greater than farm income gains. Cities gain a remarkable $37.729 million in economic welfare compared to a rigid ‘no trading’ option for handling shortages, while farms gain a much smaller $7.312 million. Nevertheless, even though farms only gain $7.312 million in income, market incentives do motivate the transfer of 139,126 acre feet of regionally sourced water (326,581–187,455) from cities to farms than would occur with trading and without affordable desal.

It is important to note that farms buy regionally sourced water from cities when trading is allowed, and desal is affordable for cities because the two cities investigated would source a high percentage of their new use from desal when both trading and affordable desal are available. Therefore, as was the case above, modest market incentives combined with urban affordable desalinated water can provide motivational power to move larger quantities of water to support resilient climate water shortage adaptation.

While the results in Figs. 2 and 3 show findings under a wide variety of hydrologic, economic, technological, and institutional conditions, the overall message remains clear: If desalinated seawater falls to a sufficiently low price to make it affordable for urban users, when combined with water trading between farms and cities, outcomes will be an enormous boost for water-scarce arid regions internationally. As of 2024, few if any technologies can supply seawater desal water to high desert inland areas at any affordable price. With the current desal technologies and energy costs of moving water to higher elevations, such as Albuquerque, New Mexico USA at 5000 feet above sea level, transporting water from a desal plant at a coastal location will be expensive with 2024 technology and input prices. This paper shows that if a desalination technology can be developed to allow for a more affordable water supply inland, likely requiring sizeable support from government subsidies, this will be a game changer in the world of climate water stress adaptation to protect food and water security.

Results of this work unexpectedly show favorable economic impacts on both cities and irrigated agriculture in North America’s high desert region of the Rio Grande Basin when desalinated seawater is made affordable for urban use through technical advance or through subsidy. A surprising finding from this work is that even if agriculture can never afford to directly use desalinated seawater water in a high desert region more than 700 miles from an ocean, the agricultural sector still secures considerable economic benefit from desalinated water made affordable for urban use. The benefits of these affordable desalination technologies arise from several sources:

First, reducing desal costs expands the economic value of regional water sources: Arid regions often face water scarcity due to limited rainfall and expensive or unsustainable aquifer pumping. Affordable desalination provides an additional, reliable source of freshwater, reducing dependence on finite resources and mitigating depletion risks from increased use of groundwater.

Second, desal cost reductions support irrigated agriculture even when the cost is too high for direct use by agriculture: where desal water is too costly for irrigation, it can be affordable for urban users, such as those in North America’s high desert Rio Grande Basin. Reduced urban use of regional hydrologic sources frees up regional freshwater sources for irrigation uses that would have been unavailable without affordable urban desalination.

Additionally, reductions in desal costs support expanded economic development: Many industries, such as manufacturing, mining, forestry, food processing, and energy production, require significant amounts of water for their operations. More affordable desalinated water in the face of climate water stress ensures a reliable supply of water for industrial processes, promotes economic growth and attracts investment in arid regions where water scarcity from regional sources would otherwise constrain such activities.

Finally, increased affordability of desalinated water can reduce water-related conflicts. Growing water scarcity heightens tensions among various stakeholders, such as farmers, urban residents, and industries, competing for water that becomes scarcer with growing climate water stress. When introduced, affordable desalination can help alleviate these conflicts by providing an additional water source by reducing the price of water and sustaining declining regional sources.

In summary, the findings from ADAM model runs reveal that desalinated water can contribute significantly to reducing the costs of adapting to water stress under climate change in one high desert region of North America. The introduction of affordable desal products would address the challenge of water scarcity, support various economic activities, and foster resilience to the impacts of climate change. Nevertheless, the environmental implications of desalination, including high energy requirements, brine disposal, and water distribution justice, need serious attention.

This work develops and applies a new agricultural and urban dynamic adaptation model (ADAM) targeted at addressing the problem of sustainable water management to reduce the cost of climate adaptation. ADAM is a multisector dynamic optimization model illustrated with a small-scale two-sector example applied to North America’s Rio Grande Basin (Fig. 1). The development of ADAM permits the discovery of the economic performance of several water shortage adaptation methods and various future potential costs of imported desalinated seawater. ADAM was developed and applied with several elements, as described below.

8.1 Study Area

The Rio Grande (RG) headwaters lie in the western part of the Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado (Fig. 1). It flows through the San Luis Valley, Colorado, then turns south into New Mexico, passing through the deep Rio Grande Gorge, continuing south toward Española, at which point it secures additional supplies from the Rio Chama. This work develops and applies the ADAM model targeted at addressing the problem of sustainable water management to reduce the cost of climate adaptation.

8.2 Recent Policy Enactments

A 2024 news announcement⁴⁶ reported that the U.S. federal government plans to spend $60 million in climate water stress drought adaptive capacity development in the Rio Grande Basin according to U.S. Interior Secretary Haaland’s statement on May 10, 2024. This funding will help increase the storage of existing dams as well as provide new off-channel storage for stormwater capture, aquifer recharge, irrigation water conservation, and programs to promote farmland fallowing, as well as protecting key ecological assets. Based on the recent 50-Year Water Plan,⁴⁷ by late 2074, the state of New Mexico can expect to have one-quarter less surface water available from regional sources for use than in earlier years. This plan recognizes that the region is facing reduced surface water supplies as well as higher cost aquifer pumping levels.

8.3 Seawater Desalination Costs

The three prices (costs) of desalinated water used to drive the ADAM model are low, medium, and high, as described in the text. The high (current) price of desalinated water was set for use by Albuquerque at $2405 per acre foot and $3371 for Las Cruces. The desalting prices included the cost of seawater desalination itself, the cost of building a pipeline from San Diego, California, to the New Mexico high desert, and the cost of pumping water uphill from sea level to the New Mexico desert, for which water is heavy at about 62.4 pounds per cubic foot.

The current cost of seawater desalination was taken to be $0.75 per cubic meter (one acre foot = 1233.5 cubic meters) for supplying the water,⁴⁸ equal to $924 per acre foot for each city. The 2024 pipeline water transport cost was estimated at approximately $2.75 million per mile from San Diego to Albuquerque and $1.50 million per mile for a smaller diameter pipeline from San Diego to Las Cruces,⁴⁹ for which each pipeline’s life was taken to be 50 years. Neither pipeline has been built yet, so these cost estimates remain uncertain.

Annual water use was set at the 2021 level of about 132,000 acre feet for Albuquerque and 22,000 acre feet for Las Cruces, for which the 750-mile distance to Albuquerque produced a horizontal delivery cost of $799 per acre foot and for which the 700-mile distance to Las Cruces produced an equivalent cost of $2799 cost per acre foot. Uphill water transport produces a $679 cost per acre foot to Albuquerque at 4957 foot elevation and $535 per acre foot for the vertical lift of 3907 feet to Las Cruces, assuming 75% pumping plant efficiency and a price of electricity of $0.10 per kwh.⁵⁰

From these calculations, the total cost per acre foot of seawater desalinated cost delivered to Albuquerque is $2405, for which the cost is $3371 for Las Cruces. These costs exceeded the current costs by $1173 per acre foot for Albuquerque and by $2774 per acre foot for Las Cruces. The medium imported desal prices were set to a cost of $50 per acre foot higher than the current cost for both Albuquerque and Las Cruces. The low price was set to a cost of $10 per acre foot higher than the current price for each city. Both medium and low prices are low according to the current standards of desalination costs and horizontal and vertical delivery costs. To be economically viable under current technology and energy costs, both of those scenarios would need to contain large subsidies to be economically viable.

8.4 Substitutions

The degree of substitutability between regional water supplies and imported desal water is important. If imported desal is easily substituted for regional sources, there is little concern about climate water stress worldwide, except for the price of imported water. A defensible theory of water user behavior and an acceptable theory of water policy need to account for both the technical uncertainty and the real cost of imported water. This paper assumes that imported water substitutes perfectly for regional sources; therefore, a major economic question turns on the price of imported water if it could be made affordable for use in this high desert region.

8.5 Seawater Desal: a Backstop Technology

ADAM models imported seawater desal water as a backstop technology, i.e., an expensive but perfect substitute for water supplied by regional sources, namely rivers and aquifers. That is, ADAM recognizes that at some finite cost of supply, urban use of desal water can be made independent of regional water sources altogether, taking much pressure off local surface and aquifer sources, a valued outcome for this high desert region as well as many others internationally. Similar ideas were developed in connection with depletable resources in earlier works⁵¹ as well as more recently⁵². With continued evidence of climate water stress internationally, there is growing interest in the discovery and development of nondepletable water sources for dealing with declining surface water and groundwater sources.

Although it will likely take many years before seawater desalination can be delivered affordably to this high desert region, this approach will inform investigations containing some powers of generalizability. Seawater desalination is a backstop technology⁵³ for surface water or groundwater supply because it offers a reliable and climate water stress-resistant source of fresh water for several reasons:

Nearly Infinite Supplies: Oceans contain approximately 97% of Earth’s water. Seawater desal technology allows water planners to take advantage of this enormous resource, providing a nearly infinite supply of water for cities with economically accessible seawater, as observed in Israel⁵³ and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Drought Resistance: Seawater desalination facilities can operate independently of the sun, wind, humidity, snow, or rain. This independence makes desal plants especially valuable in arid regions that are currently or potentially physically or economically close to the sea, making them less vulnerable to drought or climate water stress and offering a predictable water supply even during times of low precipitation.

Limited Connection to Regional Water Sources: Widely used freshwater sources, such as rivers and aquifers, can be stressed by high and growing stream diversion rates, high pumping levels, and climate change. Seawater desalination reduces the dependence on these sources, offering a more reliable and sustainable alternative.

Technical Advances: In recent years, advances in desalination technology have made the process more energy efficient and cost effective, making it a more economically viable option for addressing water scarcity challenges, especially for urban uses. A reduced cost of this backstop technology reduces the waiting period for it to be economically attractive to switch from existing depletable regional sources to the backstop.

Several Water Use Applications: Desalinated seawater can be used for several purposes, namely domestic household use, irrigation when subsidized, food processing, and even to replenish aquifers and augment surface water if the price is suitably low. This flexibility has increased its value as a backstop technology for the use of many kinds of water, especially urban domestic water.

Complements Existing Water Sources: Seawater desal does not always replace existing water sources but can complement them. In particular, where desalination can achieve affordable technical advances or government subsidies, it can reduce the stress on existing freshwater sources. Complementarity is especially important for arid regions worldwide facing population growth, growing cities, or growing water use resulting from an expanded scale of commercial, industrial, municipal, or irrigation activities needed for food security.

Overall, while seawater desalting is associated with high energy use, brine disposal, and currently high costs, it can become an important technology for supporting water security, especially in the world’s arid and semiarid regions where existing supplies are facing increased stress. Moreover, with continued technical advancements in desalination, it is likely to play a growing role internationally.

8.6 Optimization Model

The ADAM models imported seawater desal water as a backstop technology, i.e., an expensive but perfect substitute for water supplied by regional sources such as rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers. With continued evidence of climate water stress internationally, there is growing interest in the discovery and development of nondepletable water sources for dealing with declining surface water and groundwater sources.

Significance Statement

If seawater desalination technology can be developed for affordable delivery to economically distant arid regions, it could become a game changer for adapting to water stress from climate change. If the cost of desalination falls by enough to make it affordable for urban users, when combined with water trading between farms and cities, the combination would allow for efficient adaptation to climate-induced water shortages, even in arid regions with high existing levels of competition for water.

Author Contribution

FAW assembled the data, built the model, secured AES salary support, conceptualized the paper, and wrote the main manuscript text.

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You are reading this latest preprint version

Reducing Costs of Climate Adaptation: New Evidence from a High Desert

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Figures

Background

4.1 Problem

4.2 Previous Work

4.3 Gaps

4.4 Objectives

Results

5.1 Water Allocations

5.1.1 Allocation Summary

5.1.2 Farms Never Use Desal

5.1.3 Use of Regionally Sourced Water: Farms v Cities

5.1.4 Without Trading: Farms vs. Cities

5.1.5 With Trading without Desal: Farms v. Cities

5.2 Economic Outcomes

5.2.1 Outcome Summary

5.2.2 Mutual Gains from Trade

5.2.3 Scale of Gains: Farms v. Cities

5.2.4 Gains from Trade without Affordable Desal: Farms vs. Cities

5.2.5 Gains from Trade with Affordable Desal: Farms vs. Cities

Discussion

Conclusions

Methods and Materials

8.1 Study Area

8.2 Recent Policy Enactments

8.3 Seawater Desalination Costs

8.4 Substitutions

8.5 Seawater Desal: a Backstop Technology

8.6 Optimization Model

Declarations

Significance Statement

Author Contribution

References

Supplementary Material

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

Status:

Version 1