Fresh water is is becoming increasingly scarce in many countries, but not in Greenland. Its ice sheet contains about 6.5 percent of the world’s fresh water, and more than 350 billion It is estimated that liters and liters of water are dumped into the ocean every year. And with climate change Acceleration of Arctic meltingEvery year, an increasing amount of Greenland water will flow off the island.
In some water-scarce places, those same water molecules can be extracted from the sea and turned into fresh water through desalination, at high electrical and financial cost. This has inspired one start-up to undertake an unusual and ambitious business project that has been partially approved by the Greenland government: collecting meltwater from glaciers and sending it abroad.
“We have one of the best resources in the world in this area and in abundance, and we want to convey that message to investors and potential markets,” says Naaja H. Nathanielsen, Greenland’s Minister of Trade and Business.
The startup behind the idea, Arctic water bankplans to build a dam in southern Greenland, capture the meltwater and then transport it around the world in bulk ships. If all goes according to plan, the company says the project will be completely carbon neutral and cause minimal damage to the local environment.
“It is one of the cleanest waters in the world. Anyone who has tasted Greenland water knows that it is pure white gold,” says Samir Ben Tabib, co-founder and head of international relations for the startup.
Ben Tabib stresses that Arctic Water Bank is first and foremost a business, but he believes it could also provide a service to Greenlanders and the rest of the world. He says his company will help the people of Greenland by harnessing the country’s natural resources and paying taxes on the revenue generated from them – and this is an ambition shared by the government. “The goal is twofold,” says Nathanielsen. “It’s about new sources of revenue for the national treasury and the associated local business development and job creation.”
In the long term, says Ben Tabib, the Arctic Water Bank could even help mitigate The looming global water crisis“It’s probably not something our small company can solve alone, but in Greenland, freshwater is a resource that is just flowing into the sea.”
Right now, the startup has the initial permits it needs. In documents seen by WIRED, the government grants the company exclusive rights for the next 20 years to use all the water and ice from a river near the town of Narsaq. On average, this river produces 21.3 billion liters of water a year, almost all of it meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet. But before it can transport water, a dam must be built, and Arctic Water Bank will need an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) completed to begin construction.
It’s not as big a hurdle as it might seem. Greenland may be one of the world’s most pristine environments — roughly the size of Western Europe and with fewer than 60,000 inhabitants — but dam construction is not unheard of, says Karl Zinglersen, director of the Environment and Minerals Department at the Greenland Natural Resources Institute. The first hydroelectric dam was built in the early 1990s to supply the capital, Nuuk, and several smaller hydroelectric dams have since been built around the country. The environmental impact assessment process is very thorough, Zinglersen says, but in his experience it rarely stops a project.
