financial costs be damned, we should be solving droughts with desalination plants and using the salt we extract on the side to manufacture batteries. those batteries can be used to form the storage backbone of a renewables-based power grid, which can in turn feed those desalination plants with clean power
as a bonus, sodium glass batteries also don't tend to explode, this sodium extraction method is far, far less immediately damaging to the environment than lithium extraction and processing, and sodium glass batteries have demonstrated stability over a larger number of charge/discharge cycles and shortened charge times