(Bloomberg) -- Algeria plans to spend $5.4 billion boosting what are already Africa’s largest desalination facilities, as climate change piles pressure on the OPEC member’s water supplies.
Five new plants due to start operating this year will hike the amount of drinking water the nation will have the capacity to produce from the Mediterranean to 3.7 million cubic meters per day from 2.2 million, according to Lotfi Zennadi, chief executive officer of state-owned Algerian Energy Co. Six more installations are planned by 2030, he said.
The drive comes as the North African nation of 47 million people grapples with a dramatic decline in rainfall over the past two decades that’s periodically drying out reservoirs and contributing to wildfires. Rare protests erupted in a drought-hit desert city in June after authorities introduced water rationing.
Algeria’s initiative thrusts it to the forefront of a growing trend in Africa, where soaring populations and more frequent climate-induced water shortages are forcing countries to step up investment in desalination despite the high costs. It’s a process already favored by wealthy states on the Arabian peninsula, where almost all drinking water comes from the sea and one of the world’s largest plants is found at Jebel Ali in Dubai.
AEC, a subsidiary of state oil firm Sonatrach, will own and operate the plants that’ll use the power-intensive process of reverse osmosis, Zennadi said in an interview in the Algerian capital, Algiers.
It wasn’t clear how much natural gas will be needed to produce electricity for the plants. Tapping the nation’s vast reserves of the resource may potentially affect the surplus quantities for export coveted by key European markets.
Africa’s biggest country by area, Algeria now targets getting 60% of its drinking water from desalination by the turn of the decade, compared with 42% currently.
Authorities are investing $2.4 billion in the first phase and $3 billion in the second, and each of the 11 facilities will be able to produce as much as 300,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day, according to the CEO. That’ll culminate in total capacity of some 5.8 million cubic meters by 2030.
AEC will charge the state distributor Algérienne Des Eaux 52-100 dinars ($0.39-0.76) per cubic meter for the water, Zennadi said. Consumers, though, will only pay a fraction of that, with the government subsidizing about 95% of the cost.
The multibillion-dollar outlay is a significant one for Algeria, even as it basks in a recent windfall of energy revenue stemming from its status as a vital alternative gas supplier for Europe instead of Russia.
Elsewhere on the continent, Morocco expects to spend $3.1 billion on desalination facilities. South Africa, meanwhile, is turning to the technology to help supply Cape Town, which came dangerously close to running out of water entirely in 2018.
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