If you’re in the US, I’d consider selling everything and emigrating instead. Nevermind the children, do you have a future?

Fair point.

Concentrated salt water might be a waste product, but the plant was built on purpose. How long does it need to operate before the costs amortisize? Even if we’re looking at greenhouse gases, most building materials aren’t exactly climate-friendly - concrete in particular is a huge emitter of greenhouse gases.

The people who designed built the plant probably calculated all this, but the article doesn’t go into it and with novel technologies like this, it’s generally not safe to just assume that a given plant makes any economical or environmental sense.

Far cry from “perpetual free energy scheme”, though.

It’s pretty common to produce table salt by dehydrating sea water. This saltwater electricity plant doesn’t produce salt, though, since the basis of their electricity generation process is diluting concentrated salt water.

If they’re mostly using electricity or even combustion to evaporate the water (as opposed to sunlight), there’s no chance that the concentrated saltwater creates more electricity than it costs - it’s only maybe useful if the saltwater is actually a waste product.

Doesn’t sound all that economical compared with other energy sources. It probably needs to be compared to longer-term energy storage solutions that don’t rely on geography like hot sand, the possibility to store the energy source (concentrated salt water) relatively cheaply is the most interesting part about it.