We can Terraform the American West

The western US is a parched opportunity to create millions of acres of prime land for the next billion Americans to live on.

We’ve already Terraformed California and Florida , where 63 million people live in sparkling prosperous modern metropolises that were formerly uninhabitable swamps.

The key to solving water scarcity at the scale necessary to terraform Nevada is not to build bigger dams or to resort to rain dances, but to make more water using solar powered desalination technology.

If we can maintain similar cost curves on racking and installation systems, we’re within striking distance of $ 0.10 /W for a large scale array.

At the same time, and for the same reason, batteries have dropped in cost too.

Scaling these advances to the Salton-Imperial project, we can cut the cost of the array from $ 10b to $ 2b .

As part of a water deal, Nevada can lease California ’s water rights to Colorado River water and divert it on a loop or two through the state before returning flow to the river.

The lower Colorado River has three reservoirs, through which coastal desalinated fresh water could even be pumped uphill to Lake Meade .

This is not the only way to get water to Nevada .