Research article Impact of socio-economic growth on desalination in the US Jadwiga R. Ziolkowska a, * , Reuben Reyes b a The University of Oklahoma, Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability,100 East Boyd St. SEC 650, Norman, OK 73019-1081, United States b The University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Climatological Survey, 120 David L. Boren Blvd., Suite 2900, Norman, OK 73072, United States article info Article history: Received 9 August 2015 Received in revised form 1 November 2015 Accepted 7 November 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Desalination Water management Economic growth Macro-economic analysis Econometrics Time series analysis US abstract In 2013, around 1336 desalination plants in the United States (US) provided purified water mainly to municipalities, the industry sector and for power generation. In 2013 alone, ~200 million m 3 of water were desalinated; the amount that could satisfy annual municipal water consumption of more than 1.5 million people in the US. Desalination has proven to be a reliable water supply source in many countries around the world, with the total global desalination capacity of ~60 million m 3 /day in 2013. Desalination has been used to mitigate water scarcity and lessen the pressure on water resources. Currently, data and information about desalination are still limited, while extensive socio-economic analyses are missing. This paper presents an econometric model to fill this gap. It evaluates the impact of selected socio-economic var- iables on desalination development in the US in the time span 1970e2013. The results show that the GDP and population growth have significantly impacted the desalination sector over the analyzed time period. The insights into the economics of desalination provided with this paper can be used to further evaluate cost-effectiveness of desalination both in the US and in other countries around the world. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1. Background and research objectives Since 2000, recurring droughts in many regions in the US put a tremendous pressure on water resources and caused considerable financial losses in all economic sectors. For instance, the 2011 drought in Texas caused $7.2 billion in losses in the agricultural sector alone (Fannin, 2012), while the current drought in California has been estimated to cost $2.2 billion in losses as of 2014 (Chaussee, 2014). Desalination can provide a solution to those problems by supplying purified water in times of water scarcity. It has proven as a reliable water supply source in many countries (Drouiche et al., 2011; Tapsuwan et al., 2014; Sahin et al., 2015) and has been appreciated, among others, for its independency from climatic conditions (Crisp and Swinton, 2008; Ghaffour et al., 2013). The global desalination market has experienced a rapid growth since the mid-1990s, with seasonal highs and lows and an anticipated annual growth rate of almost 9% in 1990e2018. Also the desalination capacity and the amount of desalinated water have been growing up to ~60 million m 3 /day in 2013 at the global scale and up to ~4.9 million m 3 /day in the US (GWI, 2013). The developments of the desalination technology and sector are determined by many factors, among others, the economic growth, R&D, technology investment rates, and demand for desalinated water resulting, for example, from the population growth. Most of the studies addressing economics of desalination focus on tech- nological cost-effectiveness, comparisons and improvements of the desalination technology and filtering membranes as well as decreasing the total desalination costs at the micro scale (Tian et al., 2005; Kaldellis and Kondili, 2007; Mezher et al., 2011; Kesieme et al., 2013). However, studies are missing that would depict macro-economic factors impacting desalination developments over time. This paper seeks to fill this gap and provide an added- value to the literature in the field by means of an econometric socio-economic model with time series analysis for the US desali- nation sector. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of selected socio-economic factors, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), population growth, crude oil prices, and water withdrawals on the development trends in the US desalination sector. The analysis can be used to extrapolate and forecast future * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jziolkowska@ou.edu (J.R. Ziolkowska), reuben.reyes@ou.edu (R. Reyes). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.11.013 0301-4797/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Environmental Management 167 (2016) 15e22