Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
As Texas stares down a water shortfall, its leaders are looking at vast volumes of brown, briney oilfield wastewater as a hopeful source of future supply. They don’t have many other options.
But extracting clean water from this toxic slurry will require enormous amounts of energy, just as Texas fights to keep up with the rapidly growing power demands of a high-tech industrial buildout.
