Japan sees shipping opportunities in floating desalination plants

Officials from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) highlighted the opportunity at the International Maritime Seminar at Sea Japan 2014. MLIT director general, maritime bureau Toshiya Morishige said the tackling the world water shortage could benefit from the use of floating desalination plants. He noted that environmental concerns limited land based desalination plants.

The concept of floating desalination was expanded upon by Toshifumi Kokubun, a director of Deloitte Tomatsu Consulting, Japan. While he noted desalination was not a sector normally connected to shipping, that it “seems there is a lot of potential for alliance with the shipping industry”.

On the demand side the largest markets are Saudi Arabia, the US and Australia, countries which also have stringent environmental regulations. An MLIT study said that the desalination market is worth JPY600bn ($5.8bn) at present and this would increase to JPY1.5trn in five years.

In many cases though shoreside desalination projects have faced years of delays over environmental concerns as to how seawater intakes affect bio-diversity, the coastal seabed and currents. “The solution is to build plants offshore on the ocean,” he said.

Floating desalination plants are not a completely new idea and offshore facilities have been used in Saudi Arabia, Cyprus and Thailand as temporary solutions before shore plants were up and running.

Kokubun suggested that governments and international organisations formulate universal environmental rules for land-based plants and promote the development of floating desalination plants.

“Japan should rush to develop the world’s first floating desalination plant which meets safety and environmental design by using the high level technology that the Japanese shipping industry holds,” he urged.