The cost of water is broken. Subsea desalination can fix it.

In May 2025, a $204 million land-based desalination plant was approved in Hawaii. Its extraordinary cost and multi-year timeline underscore the limitations of conventional infrastructure—and the urgency of deploying faster, more energy-efficient alternatives.

Let’s look at the public data published on the Hawaii project:

• 6.5 million liters of drinking water per day

• $149.6 million capital cost

• 4-year development timeline (2 years of permitting and planning, 2 years of construction)
  

Compare that to Flocean Desal, our next-generation subsea desalination system:

• 10 million liters per day

• $28 million projected total cost (DevEx + CapEx)

• Fewer permitting constraints and minimal environmental impact
  

This isn’t a marginal improvement. It’s a fundamentally different model—built for speed, scale, and sustainability.

What’s driving the cost?

This is a conventional land-based desalination setup—likely reliant on a large, bespoke process of permitting and design. Moreover, logistics getting components to the islands and high labor costs are likely adding to the costs. Beyond this, you have the likely conventional challenges of chemical pre-treatment, surface-level brine discharge, and emissions-heavy energy inputs. Despite its cost and complexity, it reflects the standard playbook for large-scale desalination: capital-intensive, land-constrained, and slow to deploy.

A better way to build

Flocean’s subsea model eliminates many of the core drivers of that cost and delay. By moving the entire system offshore, we avoid:

• Coastal land acquisition and civil works

• Expensive energy recovery devices

• Onshore permitting delays and land-use conflict

  
  

Operationally, the benefits of subsea desalination compound:

• No chemical pre-treatment

• Lower energy requirements, using naturally cold, deep-sea water

• Brine discharge occurs deep below the photic zone, where it dilutes rapidly with minimal impact

  
  

Based on projected capital expenditures, Flocean Two offers a 7–8x cost advantage per unit of capacity—measured in CapEx per MLD—compared to conventional infrastructure. And that’s before scale effects and deployment efficiencies are factored in.

The world doesn’t have time for $200M water plants

Global demand for freshwater is rising sharply—driven by climate volatility, population growth, and industrial use. Meeting that demand with conventional infrastructure won’t scale. It’s too slow, too expensive, and too reliant on land and chemicals.

To sustainably meet global demand, we need systems that can be deployed near coasts, islands, and water-stressed regions—without waiting years or building massive onshore facilities. Flocean’s subsea architecture makes that possible. It delivers freshwater where it’s needed most, faster, with lower energy use, and minimal environmental impact.

Learn more: https://www.flocean.green/