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Published online 29 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.636
Column: Muse
Can you build a 'green' city in the desert?
The United Arab Emirates has little cause to boast of green credentials, but that shouldn’t make us too cynical about its new eco-city, says Philip Ball.
There’s something of a collision of imagery in talk of ‘going green’ in an arid climate, where literal greenness imposes such a huge burden on resources.
When Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion proclaimed his ambition to “make the desert bloom”, he foreshadowed one of the enduring sources of controversy and tension in this beleaguered region of the Middle East: water.
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The best way to combine the needs for power and water may be to move your power plants right up to the coastline. Boil seawater to rotate power turbines, collect and filter the steam to sell it as fresh water, then sell the salt left over from the distillation. You simultaneously produce power and water, all you need is an import source of energy... and I'm going to leave that to the professionals. Maybe you could boil water with solar power?