Unlimited Water, One Problem

The ocean holds about 1.335 billion cubic kilometers of water — enough to solve every water crisis on Earth many times over. The catch: pulling the salt out of seawater is energy-intensive, expensive, and creates environmental side effects that cannot be ignored.

Turning seawater into drinking water is harder than it sounds. Salt dissolves into the water at the molecular level, so you cannot simply filter it out the way you would strain sand or grit. Separating salt from water takes real force and real energy, and that single fact shapes everything about how desalination works and what it costs.