Energy and Water Consumption and Carbon Footprint in Tourist Pools Supplied by Desalination Plants: Case Study, the Canary Islands

We analyze the consumption of water and energy produced by tourist swimming pools and how it affects the water needs of the destinations, as well as the carbon footprint generated by the production of this water by industrial methods. By means of the data of water consumption from 42 tourist swimming pools on the Canary Islands (Spain), we investigate the expenses associated with them by means of simple and multivariate linear regression methods, obtaining the characteristic function that defines the water and energy consumption. With the algorithm obtained and the data of all the tourist swimming pools in the region, the water needs for the collective whole of these facilities were calculated. Considering that more than 90% of the drinking water supplied in the islands comes from desalination plants using seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), it is hypothesised that all supplies will be satisfied through these types of installation, calculating the energy requirements and the Scope 2 carbon footprint of generating the water needed to meet the requirements of all swimming pools. It can be observed that the carbon footprint is 28.16% higher through centralized production, compared with local production, due to large losses in the supply networks. The generation of the water necessary for tourist swimming pools through SWRO would represent between 0.089% and 0.114% of all emissions in the region, according to the type of supply, local or centralized, respectively-extremely significant values and equivalent to the biological treatment of all solid waste from the islands.