Page 324 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

15.5 Policy implications 323
2

1.5
SM 3
Causes
1
SM 2

0.5
SM 1
EC 3 T 1
0
0.05 0.07 0.09 0.11 0.13 0.15 0.17 0.19

–0.5
Effects T 2
EC 2
–1 EC 1 EN 1

FIG. 15.1 Influence relation map.

Among these causal barriers, the threshold value was set as 0.10 to identify the most im-
portant barriers, the weights of T 1 ,SM 1 ,SM 2 , and SM 3 are greater than 0.10. Meanwhile, all
four barriers are the most important causes, and they are the essence of low sustainable
development of desalination industry in China. Based on these, four policy implications
for mitigating these causal barriers are proposed in Section 15.5.

15.5 Policy implications

As T 1 ,SM 1 ,SM 2 , and SM 3 were identified as the four most important causes, the following
four policy implications are presented:
(1) Improving the technological level of desalination technologies in China: the lack of
advanced desalination technologies can lead to high energy consumption, high capital
cost, high operations costs, and more negative environmental impacts. In order to reduce
energy consumption, capital, cost and operations cost, and mitigate the negative
environmental impacts, developing more advanced desalination technologies is
prerequisite. There are several ways:
(i) one of the most important ways for developing more advanced desalination
technologies is to establish some special grants/funds for the research, development,
and demonstration (R,D&D) of sustainable desalination projects;