Green light for London desalination plant

London -- Thames Water has planning approval by the government’s Planning Inspector to establish a desalination plant on the north bank of the Thames at Beckton in east London.

Thames Water plans to run its proposed £200-million desalination plant entirely on renewable energy. The unit, it said, will run on biodiesel derived from plants as well as, possibly, discarded cooking fat and oil from domestic and catering industry sources.

The Beckton plant is expected to be the first of its kind in the UK; removing salt from water in the tidal stretch of the Thames to supply up to 140 million litres of water a day to London during times of drought.

“The desalination plant is an essential part of our proposals to safeguard future water supplies for London and without it we face an unnecessarily high risk of severe water shortages, said Richard Aylard, Thames Water’s sustainability director.

According to Aylard, Thames Water has now started investigating the options for increasing its use of energy from renewable sources, which currently stands at around 10% of its total energy requirement.