Mougin's team of glaciologists and engineers are working toward IceDream's first goal: drag a single iceberg from the coast of Canada across the Atlantic. To be successful, they need to find the right kind of iceberg (flat and table-shaped rather than a towering mountain-shaped one), surround it with a gigantic "skirt," and tow it across the ocean before it melts.
But even if it worked, would it be cost effective? We can compare the costs to another extreme method of getting fresh water for dry areas-desalination. This is the process of removing the salt from sea water to make it drinkable. This method certainly isn't cheap: a recently constructed plant in Saudi Arabia cost $3.8 billion to build-and in addition there are high running costs. So how do these costs compare to towing an iceberg? It has been estimated that it would cost $11.5 million to tow an iceberg big enough to supply 35,000 people with water for a year. Certainly cheaper than building a desalination plant, but it would provide water for far fewer people. Estimates suggest that water from towing an iceberg would cost more than three times as much as desalinated water. So unless Georges Mougin can come up with a much cheaper way to transport icebergs, his dream may never be realized.