Developing Opportunities for Seawater Greenhouse in South Africa

The study will assess the potential for application of the Seawater Greenhouse process along the arid

coasline of South Africa and Namibia. Using climate data from the region, we will model how the approach

will perform, cooling and humidifying the climate and generating a new source of fresh water for

irrigation. Agriculture in the region is currently marginal and risky, as evaporation exceeds precipitation

several-fold.

Successful implementation will result from teamwork, combining academic, commercial and polititical

interests locally, to establish an entity with the required skills, support, know-how and resources to

develop and implement a successful project that leads to commercial scale-up. Many of these have already

been identified, but so too have gaps, and these we will seek to fill.

We will also investigate established frameworks for cross cutting research, development and

implementation, such as the Newton and Agri-tech Catalyst programs.