Turning deserts into forests ?

The title of the talk was "Building a company that can turn deserts into forests". Coupled with the offer of a wine tasting and hors d'oeuvres at the upscale Fremont Hills Country club, free to MIT alum, this was an offer I could not refuse. Yesterday's (February 8th) event was hosted by ACG (Association for Corporate Growth) Silicon Valley. ACG is a venerable organization founded in 1954 and the Silicon Valley chapter is focused on helping small and midsize valley companies grow with contacts, ideas, training and networking. The speaker for the event was Hans Peter Michelet, Chairman of the Board of Energy Recovery, Inc. (ERI), and the talk was moderated by Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur and MIT alum herself. ERI's product, the PX Pressure exchanger is a ceramics based reverse osmosis system (as opposed to thermal/evaporation), which claims energy efficient desalination to provide drinking water from desalination of salt water at rates cheaper than we buy water in California. HP claimed that 20% of the energy consumption in California is from pumping water.

ERI's primary customers (97%) are outside the US, though many are US companies doing business abroad. The largest deployments are in Spain with 23 large desalination plants and ERI claims to have 90% of the Chinese market. The sales are however very long cycle - 4 years or more.

There are major areas worldwide which have very serious water supply problems. In Chennai, India, the city gets water trucked to homes and businesses, to cover for shortage. Of course, countries like Saudi Arabia have very large water needs which are satisfied today by evaporation based systems. In California, where we depend on water from the Sierra, if the global warming predictions come true, we may be in need of water too. In years where we have low rainfall, we have water supply and usage regulated.

So, clearly, clean water is a worldwide problem and a more urgent problem in some areas than in others. ERI claims to have a lock on their technology with patents and sees large growth opportunities worldwide. Overall, a very interesting evening and talk. Sramana Mitra has a much more detailed a multipart write up of the talk on her blog.