Sure, if you don&#x27;t account for the energy needed to form the high-energy carbon and nitrogen compounds (&quot;special salts&quot;) in the first place. In practice the &quot;special salts&quot; are either a very low efficiency fossil fuel (if you dig them out of the ground) or a really roundabout and inefficient way to spend other forms of energy.<p>The Haber process reduces N2 and plants reduce CO2, giving you the &quot;special salts&quot; (energy inputs: H2 and pump pressure for Haber, sunlight for plants). Then you burn the high-energy nitrogen+carbon compounds back into N2, H2O, and CO2 to remove them from the &quot;forward-osmosis&quot; solution. The sunlight, H2, and mechanical work used to create the special salts could almost certainly be used more effectively to generate electricity for reverse osmosis or distillation.