R&D policies for desalination technologies
2017
Tsur, Yacov | Zemel, Amos
In many arid and semi-arid regions whether or not to desalinate seawater has long been a non-issue and policy debates arefocused on the timing and extent of the desalination activities. We analyze how water scarcity and demand structure, on the onehand, and cost reduction via R&D programs, on the other hand, affect the desirable development of desalination technologiesand the time profiles of fresh and desalinated water supplies. We show that the optimal R&D policy is of a non-standard mostrapid approach path (NSMRAP) type, under which the state of desalination technology - the accumulated learning fromR&D efforts - should approach a pre-specified target process as rapidly as possible and proceed along it thereafter. TheNSMRAP property enables a complete characterization of the optimal water policy. The renewable nature of the fresh waterstock permits a non-monotonic behavior of the optimal stock process: under certain conditions, the stock is depleted, to be(fully or partly) refilled at a later date. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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