I am just curious since we are surrounded by all this water and roughly around 1% is safe and accessible to drink. Why not use the Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination method more to provide for the growing need for safe, drinkable water?
For the issue on power consumption, why not put solar panels on the desalination plants to reduce the power needed to operate them? Getting saltwater from different sources can also help the possibility of salt concentrations from these sources to being completely altered.