The higher salinity of the seawater intake reduces the plant's efficiency and, in some areas, marine life is suffering badly, affecting coral and fishing catches.

Desalination plants would turn sea water into all the fresh water anyone could want, irrigating vast inland swathes and turning deserts into fertile acres, many of them making biofuels.

Sea life can get sucked into desalination plants, killing small ocean creatures like baby fish and plankton, upsetting the food chain.