Abu Dhabi wants to ensure that by 2020, seven percent of the nation’s energy mix will be comprised of renewables, and Shams 1 – the world’s largest single unit concentrating solar power (CSP) plant – is about to put the emirate one step closer to this goal. A 100 MW CSP plant located 120 km southwest [...]
Israel, like other rich countries in the Middle East, has had to rely a lot on desalination plants to supply much of its drinking water. Desalination now supplies Mideast countries like Saudi Arabia, which is said to have the world’s largest desalination plant. The country receives almost all its fresh water supplies from this energy-intensive process. [...]
ProGen, a Turkish seed developer and supplier, has specialized in crop varieties that can withstand the hot Mediterranean climate. As climate conditions in European countries increasingly resemble those of their southern neighbors, European farmers are seeking new strains of staple crops that can adjust to the new climate. A pan-European research project, EASTBRED, brought European [...]
Maps showing depletion of Greenland’s ice fields between July 8 and 12 2012. July 12 version is on the right. Maps via The Weather Channel and NASA It’s happening much faster than most climatologists thought it would: the world’s polar ice caps and ice fields are melting at an alarming rate and virtually simultaneously. It’s [...]
A free, week-long summer camp on climate change at the end of the summer, in Jordan. Apply now! The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Foundation (HBS) in Ramallah, along with their Beirut and Tunis offices, hosts their Second Regional Summer School. This year they’re tackling two aspects of climate strategies specific to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) : the [...]
Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the Masdar CEO, is the recipient of this year’s United Nations’ Champions of the Earth award. The award honours individuals whose actions and leadership have had a far-reaching positive impact on the environment, in advancing clean energy technologies to mitigate the threats of climate change. Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted renewable energy [...]
Who doesn’t want to jump onto the carbon offset bandwagon when you see Coldplay advocating it? I mean come on, that’s a cool bunch of guys, and if they are doing it, it must be the right thing to do. As interest in environmental issues has grown, so has the alluring, politically correct, celebrity-sanctioned model [...]
“We are not rabbits,” was among the slogans against the “oil shale experiment” march today in Israel. A story of Davids versus the Goliaths? Valley of Elah residents, Greenpeace members and local NGOS in Israel organized a march today against the development of oil shale in Israel. Oil shale and its extraction remains a very [...]
Ahead of Rio +20 join the interfaith climate and energy conference in Jerusalem next week. Can mobilizing the world’s faithful save the planet where activists without faith have failed? Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders will be speaking out on climate change next week, while conveying their shared visions on renewable energy at the Interfaith Climate [...]
Dubai is not the first Middle Eastern country you think of when you think climate-friendly. That’s about to change. Dubai will develop a strategy to reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as recommendations for ultimately monetising them through a groundbreaking carbon trading scheme, it was announced today. “Our commitment towards a green [...]
From food shortages in Syria to green energy in Jordan, this news round-up will help keep you in the know It’s been busy here at GreenProphet HQ and the stories that have got us talking this week include the wind-powered minesweeper, shocking seal killing revelations as well the upcoming first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. These major [...]
South Africa, among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide, plans to introduce its own price on carbon next year. The Treasury said this week that South Africa, which is the continent’s biggest polluter, plans to introduce a carbon tax on annual emissions for all the industrial sectors responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, including electricity, [...]
An underground underwater city and water complex idea an alternative to floating islands? Climate change is causing sea levels to rise, so much that the president of the Maldives wants to locate his island nation. Some parts of the world are preparing themselves for this new reality, while urban planners look for new solutions to [...]
The Saudis got the CDM funding for carbon capture they have long demanded: how will it work? In the biggest turn-around since Kyoto was signed by the developed world – other than the US – now the big emitters, (besides America), are five developing countries, who were omitted from being bound by Kyoto, because back [...]
Funds for mitigation projects and the Carbon Development Mechanism saved in “Hail Mary pass” at climate talks While many environmentalists are decrying the COP17 climate talks (# COP17FAIL: Climate Change is a One-Size-Fits-All Problem) as being imperfect, I see some real progress hidden in all that bureaucratese. For MENA (Middle East and North Africa) nations, the best [...]
Gulf carriers are ready for the new EU carbon regulations, with 70 orders pending for the 20% more energy-efficient Boeing Dreamliner. From January next year, all airlines wishing to land and take off in Europe will have to buy permits under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to help cover the carbon cost of all [...]
Imagine a rapidly growing tourist paradise, but set in the path of a "freeway" line of oil tankers constantly moving through the Gulf region, shipping out a third of the world's oil, polluting the coastline, and you can begin to imagine the scope of the problem assessed by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Toronto.
Helios, the sun god of ancient Greece could help Greece get out from under. Here’s a surprise twist. The economic woes in Europe due to Greek debt may result in Greece supplying huge amounts of cheap solar power for Europe, by way of paying back its debts, but in the process creating rivalry with Desertec, the [...]
163,000 Moroccans who previously had no access to electricity are going solar, thanks to Tenesol. The world’s poorest two billion people have no access to any kind of electricity at all. Among them are people living in rural Morocco. These households are among the two billion that will greatly add to the world’s environmental problems over the next fifty years if [...]
Gulf States have been drilling oil for decades now. Can we really get them to co-operate at the upcoming climate summit in Durban and re-think oil? Climate negotiations to get world leaders to agree to a fair and binding agreement that will keep climate change in check have been ticking away in the background for [...]
“Deserts get more energy in six hours than the world’s population consumes in a year” – TREC I remember when Desertec was dismissed as a wild idea that would never happen, just the pipe dream of the international network of scientists and engineers of TREC (Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation), who claimed back in 2006 that “mirrors could [...]
Israeli leaders have started hosting a preparatory meeting for the 2012 Earth Summit (Rio + 20), the UN Conference for Sustainable Development, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The preparatory meeting is now taking place today through to October 27 in the Maccabia Village in Ramat Gan.
Algeria sets plans to achieve 40% renewable energy by 2030 Perhaps because it has noted what’s happened in neighboring Morocco (Could Morocco be First to Get 42% Solar?) and Egypt (Egypt in Top 22 Nations for Renewable Investment Potential) following their progressive renewable energy plans, now Algeria has announced an investment of more than $20 billion in renewable electricity over the [...]
Agrexco’s image of produce may now be gone forever Israel’s agricultural feats have often hailed as a modern miracle in the water deprived Middle East. This “miracle” pumped up with state-subsidized water is now having to face the realities of global warming and climate change, even though the Israeli public have been supporting strong action [...]
Israel’s BrightSource Energy is among the large-scale solar developers happy with the Australian government’s new carbon “tax” that was just carefully shepherded through parliament by Prime Minister Julia Gillard despite the sort of astroturfing hysteria normally perpetrated only in American media.
Weather paradox: severe drought in south with flooding elsewhere With 122 degrees in New York City, intense drought and wild fires in several American states, and mass starvation due to abnormal drought in the Horn of Africa. Middle Eastern countries like Yemen are “running dry” , and ones like Egypt are in danger of [...]
For farmers in one region in Israel, microclimates can be a headache. Little hills and valleys at differing heights and aspects influence how quickly crops grow and when infestations of pests,weeds and disease are likely to occur.
The University of Madaba’s geothermal system, the largest in the Middle East Khaled Al-Sabawi, founder and president of Palestinian green energy pioneers MENA Geothermal, was one of the speakers at this spring’s much-publicised TEDx Ramallah conference. In an engaging and humorous speech, Al-Sabawi detailed the many benefits that geothermal energy has to offer his native [...]
Studying earth from the moon could help humanity better understand climate change, Israeli engineers in Google Lunar X competition say. (From left, SPACE IL’s Yonatan Weintraub and Kfir Damari with Lori Garver, deputy administrator at NASA). As we learned recently from Rola’s post on Virgin’s galactic space travel for tourism, green research fields can be [...]
Yemen has the dubious distinction of being the first country that is expected to entirely run out of water, as the globe heats up. Its capital city Sana’a could be the first city to be emptied of its nearly half a million inhabitants by the catastrophic water scarcity that threatens billions by the the 2030s, [...]
Oil giants are looking into CCS to cut greenhouse gases. good for them! But who should pay for it? Well, now we know why Saudi Arabia held out for Carbon Capture & Storage to be eligible for CDM funding at Cancun. Sequestering CO2 in the ground is being looked at by three Middle Eastern countries, [...]
Is the vast benefit of clean energy given accurate weight against the costs to one species of tortoise? BrightSource Energy‘s 392 MW Ivanpah solar project, now under construction, has met another obstacle. With the discovery of more tortoises than expected on the land, tortoises are halting part of the pioneering solar project, according to Ucilia [...]
In Alexandria, climate change threatens tourism From London and Rotterdam to Egypt’s Alexandria, most of the world’s great old cities were settled in river deltas. Because of the ease of shipping heavy loads by water in ancient times, river deltas developed as trading posts, and grew over the centuries from villages to become the major [...]
Climate change, peak oil and too many mouths to feed topples the first of the world’s now fragile economies. Egypt is just the first nation to see the instability predicted as a result of climate change, peak oil and the unsustainable numbers of people on this planet. But this is where we are all headed, [...]
As the popular Tunisian revolt which ousted the President Ben Ali dies down, the continuing rise of food prices is becoming a real concern for the region’s governments The reasons behind the downfall of the Tunisian president Ben Ali are complex but the high food prices, which brought the average person to the streets in [...]
The Zayed Future Energy Prize is like the Nobel Prize for solutions to climate change. An extremely select jury of international experts in climate change solutions, headed up by IPPC chairman, Nobel prizewinner Dr Pachauri, decided that the Danish wind giant Vestas should be the winner of this year’s Zayed Future Energy Prize, which honors [...]
Oil prices and food prices are interconnected. Wealthy Arab states try to create a food pipeline to stave off riots. As oil prices once again begin to climb past $100 a barrel as they did in 2008 so too, as in that oil price shock, food prices are rising, too. As then, there are now [...]
Too little or too much water is a sad result of climate change When the Green Prophet article about road trains in Australia was posted back in April 2010, the Down Under continent looked a lot different than it does presently. After suffering one of its worst droughts in recent times, large portions on Australia’s [...]
Egypt is putting out a request for formal bids for wind farms to produce a staggering 2,690 Megawatts (2.7 GW) of electricity by 2016. At 80 million, Egypt already has the highest population in the Arab world, and it is growing fast economically, with over 6.5% growth expected this year. Its demand for electricity, understandably, [...]
Egypt finally harnesses a power that it understood centuries ago Egypt now has one of the very first entire towns in the world to be powered exclusively with solar power. And actually, it is a pair of towns, so it is a world first. The two villages were not previously on the national grid. Oum [...]