Water and Ambiguous Pauses

The NSW government is staking a lot on the ‘Water for Life’ plan, the focus of which is a desalination plant at Kurnell. I’m not going to rant and rave on about the stupidity of desalination as opposed to more prudent measures like reduced consumption of water in the first place, especially by industry (One BHP Billiton mine uses 33 million litres every day), or using recycled water. Instead, I take issue with the advertising campaign being used to soften up the electorate to the blow of buiding such a piece of infrastructure. I can’t find it anywhere online as an mp3 or video, not even a transript, so you’ll have to trust my impeccable memory. It went something like this:

…And a desalination plant (ambiguous pause) Powered by renewable energy (ambiguous pause) It would have zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The ambiguity of the pauses was that the hearer, me, is left unsure as to where “powered by renewable energy” fits in the text. It could either be:

…a desalination plant, powered by renewable energy. It would have zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Or:

…a desalination plant. Powered by renewable energy, it would have zero greenhouse gas emissions.

See what I mean? I can’t tell if the advertisement is stating categorically that the desalination plant will be powered by renewable energy, thus having no greenhouse gas emissions, or if the ad is merely pointing out the obvious, that the desalination plant would have no greenhouse gas emissions if it were powered by renewable energy (which is not necessarily the case).

The only thing I’d be certain about would be that the prosody of this section of the advertisement was intended to be ambiguous between these two readings. The benefit of that is to have people believe that the desalination plant will be powered by renewables yet allow the government to come back later (after the election, for instance) and say “we never said it would be, we said if it were, then…”.

At least, that’s what I would have concluded, had I not seen the government’s website about the project, which contains a pdf factsheet, stating quite unambiguously that the desalination plant will in fact be powered by the surplus 3.7 million megawatt hours of green energy that the National GreenPower Accreditation Program cannot seem to sell to consumers.

Still, never let the facts get in the way of an otherwise warranted, anti-governmental rant!

2 Responses to “ Water and Ambiguous Pauses ”

Comments:

Charlie says:
March 29th, 2007 at 10:02 am

I am trying to get there – 2tons a day target.

Regards

Charlie

Steve Evans - Anaerobic Digestion says:
April 8th, 2007 at 8:54 am

It strikes me that without wishing to enter the green energy or not debate, there may be good water engineering related reasons for using desalination.

Surely, even recycled water would be at a premium during a drought, and would need expensive treatment itself before it could be returned to the water supply?

If there was any doubt the engineers would surely have to go for the lowest risk option, which would surely be desalination?

There may be parallels with an application made for planning permission a year or so back for a desalination plant for London.

The Major of london has thrown the application out although it was approved by the local council.

The Mayor says desalination must not be used, but in my view he has not made due allowance for the cost, both in resources and energy, to provide alternative piped water from the wetter west of the UK, or local storage.

These would be huge, and out of all proportion when you realise that this desalination plant is for drought only. In other words it will only be used at the most for a month at a time, and many years not used at all.

So in terms of the energy footprint of the plant including the construction energy used, and calculated over its 20 year or so design life it is quite likely potentially actually less energy intensive to use the desalination option.

The important thing is the sustainability report and whole life energy assessment.

I presume that a whole life comparison of the energy use of the desalination plant compared with the recycling option, has been produced?