Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Desalination

TIANJIN, China — Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city’s outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.


There is but one wrinkle in the $4 billion plant: The desalted water costs twice as much to produce as it sells for. Nevertheless, the owner of the complex, a government-run conglomerate called S.D.I.C., is moving to quadruple the plant’s desalinating capacity, making it China’s largest.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/45042111/

Top 1% are getting richer



NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- From 1979 to 2007, average household income for the nation's top 1% nearly tripled, while middle-class incomes grew by less than 40%, according to a new report from a research arm of Congress.
While those at the top have seen their incomes soar over the past three decades, middle-class and lower incomes have stagnated, the report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found.