For ancient Egyptians blue was the color of rebirth. Today their chemical invention of artificial lapiz lazuli means new advances for lights, lasers and more. According to a new paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society the ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue may have important new applications in nanotechnology. Researchers at [...]
In the book “Racing Alone”, Nader Khalili pursues his own revolution using fire, earth, air and water. In “Racing Alone”, the late Iranian earth architect Nader Khalili who died in 2008 recounts the years leading to the realization of his dream; building a dwelling that infuses Persian culture, history, art, and ingeniousness, and a structure [...]
Is red tide a man-made pollutant or a natural phenomenon? Is it a plant, animal or chemical? The answer is all of the above. The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Environment and Water indicates that red tide may be present in the waters of the Gulf of Oman. As a precautionary measure, Sharjah Electricity and [...]
Unleash your inner Thoreau, show the human side of sustainability and and win $10,000 for a creative nonfiction essay. Have you been lucky enough to Dance at the Dead Sea but then couldn’t help but notice its destruction? Or you’ve have had the rare chance to travel and surf through unknown parts of Iran. Perhaps you [...]
Got internet access? Then you also have admission to university-level education, absolutely free and with fully flexible class times. Been itching to up your game in an area of science or energy? Want to be more confident when jumping into the climate change debate? Check out some of the excellent university courses offered free and [...]
The United States is poised to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020 thanks to increased output of new exploration technologies such as fracking. But what does this mean for politics? The World Energy Outlook 2012 released by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that America will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as [...]
Drinking beer is definitely more of a Western tradition than one of the East where wine is preferred, but beer has its place where tradition allows. Miriam has covered beer expos in Israel where there is a rise in boutique breweries like the Dancing Camel and a demand for organic beers. My mom always said [...]
Volcanic basalt is a rock which can be turned into oil-absorbent fibers. A company named EcoBasalt was founded in Israel in February of 2012. Its founders are leveraging Russian space technology to create a new product for cleaning up oil spills. Their product is named SB-1 and is based on the absorbent properties of basalt. [...]
Green iftars, and sustainable ways Muslims can approach the holy month of Ramadan. The holiest month of the Islamic year, Ramadan, began last Friday, 20 July. This Ramadan, many Muslims are looking at a new dimension of the month: our impact on the earth. This is particularly important as we learn more about the effects [...]
Charging our clothes to credit cards is nothing new. Now our clothes may be doing the charging. Scientists at the University of South Carolina (USC) have devised a way to turn the material in a cotton T-shirt into a source of electrical power. They envision a future where electronics are part of our wardrobe. A [...]
Apple product releases are delayed in the Mideast shortening the supported product life in this part of the world. Apple also practices planned obsolescence. In an open letter to customers, Apple’s senior VP of hardware engineering admitted that it was a mistake to remove Apple products from the EPEAT environmental rating system. He writes:”We’ve recently heard [...]
Ramadan period expected to add to weighty population Eat less, and go to the gym more. Alas, easier said than done in some Gulf states, especially during Ramadan. Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are among the world’s top ten overweight nations, a new report by BMC Public Health has found. The extra [...]
Was it the leap-second bug that pushed America’s power plants beyond their capacity? A 61 second minute was added to clocks around the world on June 30, 2012 at 23:59:60 UTC in order to compensate for slight variations in earth’s rotation speed. This triggered a number of software bugs one of which caused a spike [...]
Project Interchange attendees Brian Wynn and Stephen Walz tour Ashkelon Desalination plant with Israel Desalination Chairman Abraham Tenne. Advances in green technology are reported here often, including advances in solar energy, electric car technology and green bio-fuel from algae for future military and space programs. Interest in Israeli green technology programs came to the forefront [...]
Environmental law has proven to be quite dynamic in the Middle East. Some countries have made great strides toward protecting resources and preventing pollution. Others have done little to tackle environmental problems head on due to competing interests or public funding shortfalls. Although the majority of countries in the Middle East are Arab and Muslim, [...]
The United States Department of Commerce ruled yesterday that Chinese photovoltaic panel prices were below production costs and therefore their sale constituted dumping. Proposed antidumping tariffs ranged from 31 percent to 250% and would come into force sometime after October 2012. The tariff is expected to significantly increase the cost of solar installations in the [...]
When BrightSource withdrew its IPO this month, the death knell for solar was sounded, as always. The truth is more mundane. According to the always inquisitive Katie Fehrenbacher over at GigaOm who managed to snag a Q&A with the company, BrightSource just doesn’t necessarily need the extra money right now. Its Ivanpah solar thermal project is already fully funded [...]
For years, the goldmine for Israeli cleantech companies has been the American economy. And as Israel deploys innovative technologies across the Atlantic, it is increasingly breaking ground and gaining profits ahead of American companies. Just last week, shares of the Reno, Nevada-based unit of Israeli geothermal company, Ormat Technologies (NYSE: ORA), rose more than 2.7 [...]
A fleet of oil tankers is heading from Saudi Arabia to the US in order to drive down “unjustified” oil prices of $127 per barrel. Saudi Arabia’s current capacity of 9.9 million barrels per day already exceeds self-imposed OPEC quotas. Saudi Petroleum minister Ali Naimi said production could go up another 25% to 12.5 million [...]
Food miles explained: I know the best option is to grow and buy locally. But when that isn’t possible, what is the least worse option? It was like one of those weird trivia quizzes, What do these places have in common: Israel, Egypt, Chile and the United States? The answer is that berries from these countries were [...]
Water from air! AC water conversion and treatment unit illustration. Photo: Watergen Ltd A while ago I wrote about the possibility of creating drinking or agricultural usage water from the cooling coil condensation from air conditioners. This idea has been around for years, and has in the past been met with more than its share of [...]
Nearly 3 billion people lack safe and efficient cooking gear. It’s time to make the problem in the kitchen sexier. Half the world’s households prepare their meals over open fires or with jerry-rigged cookers fueled by scrap wood, coal, combustible waste and dung. Fatal burns are common and foraged fuel dangerously degrades indoor air quality. [...]
Casinos are illegal in some countries, online or off, and in some they are heavily regulated like in Canada and the United States. The governments there heavily tax the income from casinos, or give the revenue to First Nations communities to be used in education and community building. A no brainer to get the world [...]
By being longer, Nanosolar’s solar panels are less costly to install Advances in solar energy panel technology is reaching a stage where it is now possible to purchase DIY home kits to create solar powered electricity on the roofs of your home. And solar array panels are even being installed on the roofs of chicken [...]
Considered by some as the father of solar thermal electricity generation, Newton Becker, was the founding investor and Chairman of the Board of Luz International – the company that went on to become what BrightSource is today. He died Monday in LA at age 83. Back when, Luz became the largest solar company in the [...]
Bee colony collapse disorder is a worldwide phenomenon decimating bee colonies worldwide. Bees, you see, are pretty important. Without them much of our food can’t be pollinated. And the true reason why America lost about one third of its bees last year is largely unknown. Some believe it’s because there is lack of pollen as [...]
GE Energy demonstrates its Jenbacher gas engine at the Gas Arabia Summit 2011 in Oman today. The extent of the global problem of gas flaring can be seen in this satellite photo of North America, that is quite bewildering at first sight. On the right we see the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul Minnesota, [...]
At a time when banks could hardly be more unpopular, one of America’s most despised has just saved the biggest solar rooftop project in US history. It is not just the Occupy Wall St protesters who are angry at the behavior of banks. At the Durban Climate Talks this week, NGOs attending the Durban Climate [...]
A pregnant me at the very sunny Better Place visitor center last year. With the launch of the first nationwide electric car networks rolling out in Israel and with Denmark just months away, the electric car company Better Place today reports that it has secured another $200 million in financing, on top of the $55o [...]
Solar energy is predicted to be important energy source in USA by 2031 The just completed Solar Power International Conference and Exhibition in Dallas Texas painted a bright future for the use of solar energy in the USA, according to Julia Hamm, President and CEO of the Solar Electric Power Association (SEPA). Hamm, who addressed [...]
Can we make online gambling green? Unlike in most other countries in the world, online Poker in America is illegal. Other forms of online gambling and online casinos are not, but now the Feds in the United States are considering changing the laws so that online poker can be made legal once again. There are [...]
Karin speaks with HCL Clean Tech CEO Eran Baniel (above) about wood to sugar developments in Mississippi. It’s not every day that an Israeli company based on the science of a Nazi collaborator wins a huge US contract. But HCL Clean Tech, which offers a process to turn wood chips into biofuel, just received a [...]
It is expected to fall today: a dead six-ton satellite will hit earth today, NASA predicts. Where it will fall is anyone’s guess. Iran, Israel, India, Illinois? Space junk is becoming a serious environmental concern, especially when it starts falling back to planet earth. NASA has issued an advisory that an old satellite, the Upper [...]
Climate change hits America’s Red States hard – but there’s plenty of wood waste there for clean biofuel energy production – that could head off even worse climate change Politicians in America’s Southern Red States are notorious for decrying clean Renewable Energy Standards on the grounds that they have no solar or wind resources, and [...]
Algae based bio-fuel may someday be an important fuel source Los Angeles based Origin Oil has recently announced its intention to up-list its stock exchange shares as a result of the development of a new large scale oil extraction from algae process that could result in the process of up to 1100 liters (300 gallons) [...]
Rola learns how space traveling from LA to Abu Dhabi could one day produce less greenhouse gas than commercial air carriers. Last week, in the historic large lecture theatre at the Royal Institution in London, the oldest independent research body in the world, Stephen Attenborough, the Commercial Director for Virgin Galactic, spent two uninterrupted hours mesmerizing [...]
As California’s LEED synagogue hits the auction block, a more sustainable “light unto the nations” might be the DC synagogue’s Energy Star rating. Larry reports. Orthodox Judaism rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as energy conservation. And from the outside, there’s little to suggest that Washington DC’s Ohev Sholom — which brands itself “The [...]
Russian nuclear icebreaker 50 Years of Victory: Can spend many months at sea With the nuclear power plant crisis in the Chernobyl reactor in 1986 and now the recent Japanese nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant many people are still wondering if there is any possible good use for nuclear energy , especially [...]
$10 million is the lucky number for two Israeli cleantech companies and Al Gore. Tigo’s Maximizer can add hundreds of hours worth of sun to your utility bill. A fund that Al Gore’s chaired has already invested $10 million in an Israeli cleantech company – GreenRoad, a company that has a software solution to manage [...]
Feeling bad about your junk food diet? New research on Egyptian mummies finds death by clogged arteries. There was no Golden Arches or Krispy Kreme doughnuts for ancient Egyptian royalty. And they weren’t smokers, addicted to the Internet, or couch potatoes. But they do share similar health consequences with the people who do these things [...]