of 1 – 2 MW at Sunndalsøra, 400 km north of Oslo was considered but was subsequently dropped. The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO) in Japan is funding work on osmotic power. Industrial usage Advantages Forward osmosis (FO) has many positive aspects in the treating of industrial effluents containing many different kinds of contaminants and also in the treating of salty waters. When these draw effluents have moderate to low concentrations of removable agents, the FO membranes are really efficient and have the flexibility of adapting the membrane depending on the quality desired for the product water. FO systems are also really useful when using them combined with other kinds of treatment systems as they compensate the deficiencies that the other systems may have. This is also helpful in processes where the recovery of a certain product is essential to minimize costs or to improve efficiency such as biogas production processes. Disadvantages The main disadvantage of the FO processes is the high fouling factor that they may experience. This occurs when treating a high saturated draw effluent, resulting in the membrane getting obtruded and no longer making its function. This implies that the process has to be stopped and the membrane cleaned. This issue happens less in other kind of membrane treatments as they have artificial pressure forcing to trespass the membrane reducing the fouling effect. Also there's an issue with the yet to be developed membranes technology. This affects to the FO processes as the membranes used are expensive and not highly efficient or ideal for the desired function. This means that many times other cheaper and simpler systems are used rather than membranes. Industrial market and future Currently the industry uses few FO membranes processes (and membranes technologies in general) as they're complex processes which are also expensive and require a lot of cleaning procedures and that sometimes only work under certain conditions that in industry can't always be ensured. For that reason the focus for the future in membranes is to improve the technology so it's more flexible and suitable for general industrial usage. This will be done by investing in research and by slowly getting these developments into the market so the production cost is lowered as more membranes are produced. Keeping with the current development it can be ensured that in few years from now, membranes will be spread-used in many different