The ink was barely dry on Washington’s newly announced Abraham Accords late last year when Brian Finkel hopped on one of the very first direct flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai.

His mission: to pave the way for a joint venture between his company, D’vash Organics, and Al Barakah Dates Factory—one of the world’s largest manufacturers and suppliers of date products.

The deal, finalized Feb. 24, is a milestone for the Chicago-born Finkel, whose company has built its reputation on producing Biblically inspired date syrup for the U.S. organic foods market.

“With our new partnership, we will sell Al Barakah’s line of date products under the D’vash  Organics brand name all over the world,” Finkel told Green Prophet last week. “The deal gives us access to Al Barakah’s unparalleled manufacturing capabilities, pricing and supply. In return, it provides Al Barakah with access to US and other Western retail and wholesale markets under the D’vash Organics name.”

He added: “They wanted access to the US market, because they don’t have much presence outside the Middle East. For them, this is a conduit into the US and Western retail markets. They really are a behind-the-scenes manufacturer, and now they’ll have a piece of the action.”

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, though D’vash Organics expects to see revenues of $2 to 3 million in fiscal 2021.

Finkel, an Orthodox Jew who lives in the West Bank settlement of Yakir, made aliyah [immigrated to Israel] in July 2013. Soon after, the Wharton School and financial consultant discovered silan, or date syrup.

“My mother-in-law uses it in desserts. It’s ubiquitous here and it’s such a versatile product,” he said. “One day, I had this ‘eureka’ moment. I called David Czinn, my friend and business partner in California, and asked him if this is a thing in America. He said, ‘no, but it should be.’ Because he’s in the food industry, he was able to leverage his connections.”

That led to a deal to source the product from organic dates grown in California’s Coachila Valley. Finkel and Czinn thought about exporting the product from Israel but said shipping costs would have been prohibitive.

But eventually, they discovered Dubai in the United Arab Emirates—which not only boasts 44 million date trees but also offers substantially cheaper shipping rates than either Israel or California.

“At that time, there were no diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE. They never asked where I was located, and I never volunteered that information, so it never became an issue,” he said. “The only time anything related to Israel ever came up was when we wanted to put a hecksher [kosher stamp] from the London Beit Din on the product. They told us we’d have to edit our label because according to local law at the time, nothing could be exported from the UAE if it referenced Israel, had Hebrew writing or said ‘kosher.’”

Yet once Finkel’s religion and country of residence became known, it wasn’t a problem at all. In fact, he said, “when we met at the factory in Dubai, we had two days of marathon negotiations, and we talked very openly and fondly about the similarities between our two cultures. They bent over backwards to make sure I had kosher food.”

Interestingly, the word “Israel” appears nowhere on the label—and that’s no accident.

“Our product is inspired by Israel,” Finkel said. “It has roots in the Bible and originates from the land of milk and honey, but this has broader appeal than just Jewish or Israeli.”

In fact, most date syrup—if it doesn’t originate in either California or Israel—comes from an Arab country, generally Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia or Algeria. 

“Date honey is lower on the glycemic index than bee honey,” he said. “For people watching their sugar, dates are a healthy source of anti-oxidants and fiber. My father, for example, can eat date products but not table sugar. Unlike bee honey, it’s safe for babies—and it’s vegan.”

Finkel said he has worked with Tunisian and Algerian date producers, through third parties of course, but that “ever since we made the decision to move away from California because it was price-prohibitive, we were basically looking for someone who could make quality product at the right price. The Dubai guys are the best. Not only are they the easiest to work with, they also do everything A to Z—all the bottling, on-site packaging and even printing.”

Finkel said D’Vash products are currently sold in 6,500 stores across the United States. But now he’s starting to sell to Canada, and is also launching a test run with Costco outlets in San Diego, Texas and the southeastern US.

“We typically have sold only syrups, but we’re now starting to get into new products,” he said. “If the Costco test runs go well, we could easily break into the high seven figures in the next year or two, because they order in such massive quantities.”

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DUBAI — Mention Dubai, and people immediately think of soaring skyscrapers, enormous shopping malls and insanely expensive sports cars. But 30 kilometers south of this world-class city-state — along the E66 highway towards Al Ain, and just past a Chuck-e-Cheese outlet — the glitz gives way to desert.

Here at Umm Nahad, there are no architectural wonders to behold, other than a lonely strip of asphalt stretching into the distant horizon. The quiet is punctuated only by the occasional screech of jets taking off and landing at a nearby military air base.

What a perfect place for a camel farm.

Known by its playful brand name, Camelicious — the farm represents one of Dubai’s very few attempts at actually producing something: healthy, natural camel milk.

About 250 people work at Camelicious, on a huge tract of land covering 25 to 30 square kilometers.

“Dates and camel milk are part of the staple diet of Bedouins. This is what people here used to live from,” said company communications director Kirsten Lange, speaking to GreenProphet.com during our recent visit to Camelicious. “Quite a few locals have camels. They drink the raw milk from their own camels, even though they might live in the city.”

At the moment, about 3,600 camels make up this operation, said Lange, though the idea is to have 10,000 animals within the next two or three years.

So how do the workers keep track of all these dromedaries?

“The camels have numbers, but of course our vets know the old ones,” Lange said as she guided us around the farm. “Once in awhile, we give them names. Once we had a camel with lots of hair; we called her Tina Turner. They have GPS trackers on their collars, and we have a very extensive database. On every camel we have a huge database, and they get regular blood and urine tests.”

The point, of course, is to get these camels to produce as much milk as possible. The average camel gives seven liters a day, though not all camels are producing at all times. Daily production averages 5,000 to 6,000 liters, she said.

Last February, the company got permission from UK authorities to export its camel milk to the British market. The Camelicious brand is now available in selected ethnic stories in London, Brighton, Manchester and Bradford. Milk powder has also been shipped to potential partners in the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.

Milk “Camel” Chocolate

In addition, there are two sister companies: The Majlis and Al Nassma. In July, Al Nassma — which distributes fine chocolate products made from camel milk — reported a 100% growth in sales over the previous 12 months. The Majlis, meanwhile, runs a retail outlet at Dubai Mall, selling a range of bread loaves, muffins, Danish pastries and ice cream.

“Camel milk has always been known in the Middle East, but the accessibility for the wider public has been limited. We at EICMP have been reaching out to the broader community in the UAE to encourage a healthy lifestyle since 2006,” said Mutasher Al Badry, the company’s manager of business development. “Our goal is to promote the benefits of camel milk as a natural and pure resource of the region, and as a healthy alternative to cow’s milk.”

While not everyone likes the taste of camel milk — Camelicious tends to have a pleasing, slightly salty taste — the experts seem to agree that it’s far healthier than the kind that comes from cows.

Besides having three times more Vitamin C and 10 times more iron than cow’s milk, it’s antibacterial, low in lactose and shows promise in treating everything from diabetes to Crohn’s disease. A 2005 study showed that just 500 milliliters of raw fresh camel milk daily improves the quality of life for diabetics, thanks to a protein found in this particular milk that has characteristics similar to insulin but doesn’t coagulate.

“About 25 years ago, Dubai’s Central Veterinary Research Lab set up a research facility to explore what a camel could really be used for. Before that, no one thought of commercially exploiting camel milk,” she explained. “After awhile, when it became clear that this might be profitable, the company was set up on the same premises under the leadership of CVRL. It was founded in 2003 and became operational three years later.”

Lange, a German development and PR consultant who speaks Arabic fluently, previously worked in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Yemen before resettling in Dubai.

Lange said the Camelicious operation is heavily subsidized by the government, to the tune of “tens of millions of dollars,” though she wouldn’t be more specific.

“It is a private company, of course, owned by several shareholders. It’s not at the break-even point yet, but right now, with exports to Europe and the prospect of getting FDA approval — as well as getting into new industries like pharmaceuticals — inshallah it will be profitable soon. We see a lot of market potential.”

Camelicious comes in a variety of tempting flavors — so far, it’s available in plain, chocolate, saffron, date and strawberry. With the brand’s humorous logo of a cartoon camel with sunglasses, one might think this would be the perfect off-the-beaten-path destination for tourists and their kids.

But this isn’t Dubai Waterpark. As Lange said, “we are not a tourist attraction. We are running a business operation here with ISO and EU standards.”

Most of this operation is even off-limits to members of the media, who are not allowed anywhere near the milking facility. And visitors may enter the production and bottling line only after donning disposable blue outer garments to reduce any possible contamination from outside.

Many of the workers, it appears, come from India, Bangladesh and Nepal — along with several Arabic-speaking employees — though none of them would talk to this reporter. Asked how they all communicated, Lange said, “the ones who don’t speak English take classes. We have people who started here eight years ago not knowing English, and now their English is excellent. We take pride in caring for our workers.”

On the other hand, she said, “running a camel farm is not only about having camels. Here, we have 10 years of company experience and 25 years of research, but we are not done. No one is ever done,” she said. “Everyone who sets up a camel farm will eventually face problems.”

One such problem surfaced last June, when a team of Dutch and Qatari medical researchers found that the virus which causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is found in camel milk. That prompted the Qatari government to issue guidelines warning against drinking raw camel milk, and that milk be boiled before consumption.

In Dubai, Camelicious is available through the Waitrose supermarket chain for 10 dirhams per liter; its price is fixed by local municipal authorities.

But in the States, camel milk costs more than some premium liquors, when it’s available at all. Walid Abdul-Wahab, founder and CEO of Desert Farms, told the trade industry publication DairyReporter.com there are 18,000 cows for every camel in the United States. That’s why pasteurized whole camel milk goes for $16 per pint (473 ml).

“Camel milk retails for double the price of cow’s milk, but when it comes to European prices and maybe later on the U.S. once we get FDA approval, it’s up to the retailers,” said Lange. “It’s all about creating standards for camel milk. How do you judge whether the quality is good or bad? For other milk, there are already standards. The FDA basically has to do the same.”

Larry Luxner is a freelance journalist and photographer who writes frequently about Latin America and the Middle East. Photo credit: Larry Luxner, 2014, for Green Prophet

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Publication of the 2014 index was followed only a week later by the signing of a landmark agreement in Beijing between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, that commits the two countries to reduce or limit carbon dioxide emissions in coming years. It also comes right before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP20), to take place Dec. 1-12 in Lima, Peru.

ND-GAIN is the world’s leading annual index that ranks 178 nations based on their vulnerability to climate change and their readiness to adapt to the droughts, superstorms and natural disasters that climate change can cause.

Leading this year’s index worldwide is Norway, with a score of 82.7 out of a possible 100, followed by New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, Germany and Iceland.

Middle East countries ranked by readiness

In the Middle East, the highest-ranking countries were Israel (70.4); United Arab Emirates (69.1); Qatar (66.8); Turkey (66.7); Jordan (65.87); Oman (65.2) and Bahrain (64.7). At the other end of the spectrum were Iraq (41.1); Yemen (43.9); Mauritania (49.0) and Djibouti (49.6).

Ranking somewhere in the middle were Kuwait, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Morocco, Iran, Syria and Libya.

Worldwide, the country least prepared for climate change is the landlocked African nation of Chad, with a score of 31.6.

Study Norway for better climate change future

All these countries could learn a thing or two from Norway, suggests Oslo’s ambassador in Washington, Kåre R. Aas.

“This index is an important acknowledgement of what Norway is doing,” he said. “Norwegians are ourselves being affected by climate change. For instance, a huge part of our population lives near the coast and in cities, which will see increasing precipitation. We also see some challenges related to more floods and heavier landslides.”

With only 5.1 million inhabitants spread across its territory, Norway enjoys relatively low population density and a very high standard of living. It ranks first among 185 countries in the Human Development Index compiled annually by the United Nations Development Program, and also came out on top — for the sixth year in a row — in the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index published earlier this month.

But Aas said Norway’s readiness for climate change has little to do with its wealth, and even less with its size or geography.

“Other countries can learn some obvious ideas and concrete proposals from Norway,” he said. “First and foremost, science is key. You need to have a research-based understanding of climate change, and we in Norway have been doing scientific work on this for many years.”

Aas said Norway continually monitors climate change on Spitsbergen — a remote, Maryland-sized island in the Svalbard archipelago near the North Pole that’s home to fewer than 2,500 inhabitants (not including polar bear pictured below) — while elaborating climate models to face future challenges.

“When we look at temperature increases, we see 2C globally but 4C in the Arctic. That’s why we’ve been consistently inviting members of Congress to the Arctic, in order for them to witness what is really going on,” said the ambassador.

Norway and other high-ranking countries in the Global Adaptation Index do share certain characteristics. Many face moderate exposure to climate change, but they also have good capacities to deal with the risks, such as high access to amenities like electricity, sanitation and clean drinking water. In general, they’re also less dependent on natural capital and better prepared for natural disasters. They also practice good governance.

“This 2014 index captures the latest in vulnerability and readiness data and research,” said Jessica Hellmann, ND-GAIN’s research director. “In Norway and other members of the ND-GAIN leaderboard, we see role models in countries positioned to adapt to climate change. We also see a need for improvement. Not even the most developed countries are risk-free and completely prepared to deal with climate change.”

Hellmann was one of several speakers to address ND-GAIN’s Nov. 5 annual meeting at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank. This meeting serves as the premier gathering of domestic and international experts on climate change adaptation, and is attended by leading figures from the government, nonprofit and private sectors.

“ND-GAIN continues to be an open, transparent and actionable index, which has been conceived with the aid of open-source, state-of-the-art data and analysis tools,” said Nitesh Chawla, the organization’s index director. “ND-GAIN also is preparing a scenario-analysis tool for users to conduct ‘what-if’ analyses and evaluate the impact of different possible action plans. This actionable nature of the index, and the tools we have, allows us to provide customized products to partners and other interested parties.”

Private sector investment needed

Juan José Daboub, founding CEO of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Institute and a member of the ND-GAIN advisory board, is a former finance minister of his native El Salvador, and is also former managing director of the World Bank. He said the world must spend $30 billion to $100 billion annually for the next 25 years just on adaptation. That doesn’t even include mitigating the effects of climate change.

Since few governments can possibly cover that cost, the answer can only come through private-sector investment — especially since it doesn’t appear likely that the world will come to an overarching agreement on reversing climate change anytime soon.

“My country, El Salvador, went literally from hardship to investment-grade in a relatively short period of time,” Daboub said. “We used to use indicators very similar to the ND-GAIN to persuade, convince and encourage policymakers to adapt the right, proven policies to change the future of our country. This means opening up the economy and investing in health and education.”

He added: “The different matrixes used in ND-GAIN allows any decision-maker to dive in and see, for example, how come Costa Rica is doing better than El Salvador in access to clean water. We use tools like that to help move the needle and attract investments. When you implement the right public policies, you’ll open the eyes of private investors.”

Meanwhile, Aas said Norway has implemented several successful policies of its own, such as offering its citizens generous tax incentives to buy electric vehicles. Other perks include free use of bus lanes, free parking, free ferry rides and free charging at municipal stations — all this in a country where gasoline costs the equivalent of $9 a gallon. This helps explain why Norway now has 25,000 electric vehicles on the road — mostly of the Telsa Model S and Nissan Leaf varieties — and hopes to double that number by the end of next year.

Aas said that when it comes to preventing irreversible warming of the planet in coming years, it isn’t a question of adaptation versus mitigation.

“We have to do both. We can’t just do one or the other,” he said. “What the United States and China have agreed on indeed sends an important message to the international community. There is an increased awareness on climate change globally, but also here in the United States. The EU also has come up with concrete proposals on reduction of emissions reductions. We have to keep going steadily forward.”

Top image: Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Shutterstock.com; Image of Bergen, Norway from Shutterstock; Trolltunga, Norway

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WASHINGTON — Inhabitants of the oil-exporting sheikhdoms and emirates of the Persian Gulf wolf down an average 3,700 calories a day —leading to the highest rates of obesity on Earth — even as at least 805 million people, one-ninth of the world’s population, go hungry.

Such huge disparities will ultimately lead to widespread unrest, warns Deborah Wheeler, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who specializes in Middle East politics.

Wheeler (pictured below while on research in Kuwait) was one of a dozen experts meeting Oct. 16 at Virginia’s George Mason University, just outside Washington, for a summit on global food security and health.

“The United Nations says we will add two billion people by 2050 and an additional one billion by 2100, for a total world population of around 10 billion,” said GMU public policy professor Kenneth A. Reinert, a frequent consultant for the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Department of Commerce. “Approximately one billion of these additional individuals will reside in Africa, and another one billion in Asia. Both Africa and South Asia are currently basic goods-deprived environments.

Even worse, he said, “the majority of countries whose population growth is expected to be fastest in the future are precisely those showing inadequate food consumption and high levels of undernourishment.”

At the other extreme are a handful of small Arab states in the Persian Gulf that owe their mind-blowing wealth entirely to oil and gas. Qatar’s annual per-capita income exceeds $100,000, making that country’s 2.1 million inhabitants among the world’s wealthiest. Excluding migrant workers who form the vast majority of Qatar’s population, per-capita GDP jumps to nearly $690,000.

Oil rich but very food insecure

Yet Deborah Wheeler, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, sees dark clouds on the horizon.

“These countries depend more than 90 percent on the global food market to eat and drink,” she said. “Kuwait imports 98 percent of what it eats and drinks. It makes sense for them to import. But relying on that global market is becoming increasingly problematic.”

Wheeler, whose presentation at GMU was titled “Food Security and Gluttony in a Water Scarce Region: Lessons in Sustainability from the Arabian Gulf,” showed her audience a photo of the glitzy new Dean & DeLuca gourmet food emporium in Kuwait City. At 21,500 square feet, it’s the largest Dean & DeLuca franchise in the Middle East.

Another image was of the new Cheesecake Factory outlet at a Kuwait City mall.

“We’ve sent all our worst habits to the Gulf, and they are very happy to have them,” she said. “The Gulf countries are a perfect lab for studying non-communicable diseases. Diabetes is growing faster here than anywhere else on the planet, yet they’re in a water-scarce region — and it’s oil wealth that allows them to mask this problem.”

Wheeler, a political scientist, has done research in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Morocco, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. She specializes in information technology diffusion and its impact on the Arab world, as well as gender issues and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She said that in Kuwait, 70 percent of the adult population, and 48 percent of all adolescents, are either overweight or obese.

Food insecurity could lead to radicalization

“As we know, as GDP goes up, consumption is transformed. These are rich countries and they eat like rich countries. The problem is, they don’t produce anything they eat,” she warned. “In spite of having all that oil wealth, which allows them to live way beyond their ecological footprints, we’re starting to see cracks. How did the Tunisian revolution start? A vegetable seller set himself on fire. That led to a transition.”

Wheeler added: “These countries are so fragile. As soon as they collapse, we’re going to see massive Islamization.”

RELATED: Gulf States land grab for food production in Africa

In fact, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates rank in the bottom 10 percent of the world’s sustainable nations. All of these countries have seen population growth exceeding three times the global average, yet during the same time there’s been a rapid decline in the amount of available fresh water.

These countries are also among the biggest food wasters in the world, producing 150 million tons of municipal garbage a year. In addition, they release more carbon into the atmosphere on a per-capita basis than anyone else. Yet they don’t produce anything, which is why the Gulf Cooperation Council’s food import bill has jumped by 105 percent since 2010; experts estimate that the six GCC nations will spend a combined $53 billion a year on food by 2020.

“These people lead highly consumptive lifestyles that are ultimately dangerous to public health,” Wheeler said.

It’s no wonder diabetes is through the roof in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE; citizens of the GCC nations consume an average 3,700 calories a day. They also have the world’s highest per-capita water consumption, even though their countries are among the driest on the planet.

“People are aware of the fact the cost of living is increasing rapidly. And what are their governments doing? They’re cutting subsidies. This leads to public protests in places where we don’t expect it,” she said, adding this is why Washington needs to be concerned. “Last summer while I was in Kuwait, there were public demonstrations in support of Islamic State. They’re upset with their government, and any movement that looks like it might sweep that existing government out of the way will get their support.”

Image of  Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Almaktoum from 965malls; top image of kabsa mandi from Saudi Arabia from UCAELI

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And would the possible lifting of sanctions against Iran depress oil prices enough — at least in the short term — to hurt the many Arab states that depend on petroleum exports for revenue?

These are among the key issues facing politicians, pundits and corporate bigwigs throughout the Middle East — and all were fodder for discussion during the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 22nd Annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference.

An energy panel held on the first day of the Oct. 22-23 event brought together five experts: Dr. Herman Franssen, executive director of the Energy Intelligence Group; Sarah Ladislaw, co-director of the energy and national security program at Washington’s Center for Strategic & International Studies; Thomas Graham, executive chairman of the board of directors of Lightbridge Corp.; Shihab Kuran, president of Sun Edison Advanced Solutions, and Kevin Book, co-founder of ClearView Energy Partners LLC.

The panel was moderated by Randa Fahmy Hudome, general counsel for the American-Egyptian Strategic Alliance and former associate deputy secretary of energy.

“This month, we marked the 40th anniversary of the Arab oil embargo,” said Fahmy Hudome, a former U.S. associate deputy secretary of energy. “What has happened since then with U.S. energy policy vis-à-vis the Arab world? Not much, except for this past year. We are now witnessing the most profound changes in energy production and relationships since 1973 — not only in the U.S.-Arab relationship but across the world.”

Franssen certainly agrees with that assessment.

“In the United States, we have made enormous progress that would have been thought impossible 10 years ago. The technology that already existed was perfected, and prices of $100 a barrel made shale gas possible. Today, more than a fourth of our gas production is shale gas,” said the Dutch energy expert, a former adviser to Oman’s Ministry of Petroleum and Minerals. “We are now in a situation where the United States — instead of being a massive importer of liquid natural gas — will most likely be an exporter of LNG, perhaps even a very large one. We could even rival Qatar.”

For a “very long time to come,” said Franssen, the United States will be self-sufficient in gas, and will be able to produce it at relatively low prices compared to any of its rivals. That’s quite a switch from 40 years ago, when American consumers were literally at the mercy of the Arabs and the multinationals that did business with them.

“Prior to 1973, two-thirds of global oil reserves were in the hands of seven giant energy conglomerates known as the ‘seven sisters.’ The events that took place in 1973-74 led to a complete revolution,” said Frassen, referring to the Arab oil embargo sparked by U.S. support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

OPEC called off the embargo in early 1974, but things were never the same again.

“By then, Middle East oil producers and other OPEC countries had nationalized their resources, so instead of two-thirds of all oil in the hands of the seven sisters, two- thirds were now controlled by national oil companies. That marked the emergence of OPEC as a real power.”

Yet whether the 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is still a “real power” four decades later is debatable.

As Amy Myers Jaffe and Ed Morse wrote in Foreign Policy, the 1970s witnessed “a profound and unprecedented transfer of wealth” to the Middle East that continues to have significant repercussions today — from democracy movements to terrorism and civil wars.

“The region’s leaders failed to set up long-term mechanism to distribute the benefits of that wealth transfer broadly to their populations and to establish an equitable stake in governance of resource proceeds that would have brought a newfound stability to the region,” said the article. “Instead, they bought lavishly, gilding their palaces and buying fleets of luxury autos. For decades, they squandered the opportunity to use oil wealth to modernize their societies and train their populations for future global economic competition. The result — unfolding not just in the Middle East but in other oil-producing countries as well — is a crisis of governance that is itself triggering a round of oil-supply disruptions.”

At the same time, growth in renewable energy has been remarkable. World biofuels production has doubled to more than 1.2 million barrels a day since 2006, while wind power has grown in oil-equivalent terms from one million b/d to two million since 2008. Solar power, meanwhile, jumped from 20,000 b/d of oil-equivalent energy in 2008 to 400,000 b/d last year, according to the article.

In addition, technological advances such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as “fracking” — have allowed the United States to boost production of shale oil and gas from places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania, while abundant U.S. natural gas is spawning new American-designed engine and modular fueling station technologies to readily use natural gas as a fuel in trucks, trains and ships, ending oil’s monopoly in transport.

So, is OPEC “over a barrel,” as a recent Bloomberg article put it?

Absolutely, writes the article’s author, Meghan O’Sullivan. Besides being largely unsuccessful, OPEC’s most powerful members these days are not interested in preventing huge spikes in world oil prices — nor do they have the ability to inflict similar shocks on the world as they once did.

“The 1973 crisis also launched widespread efforts in the West to find and develop ‘non-OPEC’ oil, to increase energy efficiency, and to bring alternative sources of energy online. OPEC has no self-interest in tanking the fragile economic recoveries of today with high oil prices — or in further catalyzing the already vigorous pursuit of non-oil energy sources,” she wrote.

And that subject is of major concern to the Arab world, which is why energy was the focus of the first panel at last month’s Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference.

Natural gas is flared from a unit at the Faregh gas complex deep in the Sahara Desert near Jalu, Libya.

“The world is moving to a low-carbon framework, complicating oil, gas and coal,” explained CSIS’s Ladislaw. “We are currently living through the spectrum of this unconventionals revolution. This has reordered the global landscape for new energy investments.”

One of the biggest questions, she said, is how governments around the world will respond to domestic economic difficulties as a result of such a massive shift in the global oil market. “A lot of countries are reassessing their own ability to insulate themselves and become more resilient to a wider array of potential energy futures,” Ladislaw said.

In 1973, OPEC exported two-thirds of its total oil production to Europe and North America. Today, two-thirds of its exports go to Asia — mainly China.

“But the very fact that 50 percent of the world’s oil is in the Middle East ¬— and that it’s the only region in the world with the ability to export most of what it produces — makes it the most important region for the oil industry. It will not be replaced in that role, no matter what we do in North America,” said Frassen.

“The Saudis and others remain the key element in the world of oil. What we are achieving now depends on a number of things,” he said. For one, oil must be priced at a minimum $80 a barrel for “unconventional” oil to be profitable. Secondly, the technology used by the United States must continue to be stable.

Book, a senior associate at CSIS and a member of the National Petroleum Council, spoke of a “possible pivot to Persia” — a reference to what might happen if Congress imposes ever-more stringent sanctions against Iran in an effort to force the regime in Tehran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons.

“We are looking at a very short-term discussion. From the crude risk perspective, this is big but it’s bidirectional: plus or minus one million barrels a day. That’s a big deal for the market,” he said.

Chinese oil workers repair a valve at a rig near Faregh, Libya, deep in the Sahara Desert. The rig is operated by China Oilfield Services Ltd. (COSL).

In the event Congress passes a measure that imposes economic sanctions against the remaining buyers of Iranian oil — China, South Korea, Japan and India — roughly one million barrels would be removed from the world market, pushing up prices to around $114 a barrel from the current $100. On the other hand, oil production in Iraq has skyrocketed by nearly 40 percent since the end of the Iraq War and could reach six million barrels a day by 2020, adding to a potential oil glut. And Iraq can produce oil at a far lower cost than unconventional oil anywhere in North America.

“We can benefit as a producer nation, but we stand to suffer far more than we benefit,” Book said. As a result, we are ill-positioned for all this loose talk about energy independence, in my view. Think about what the world will look like when you yank out 10 million barrels of production a day.”

Arab countries know their black gold will run out someday and have already begun looking for alternative energy supplies for their own rapidly growing populations. Two options being aggressively pursued are nuclear and solar power.

“In the past, there’s been virtually no use of peaceful nuclear power in the Middle East,” said Graham. “Egypt flirted with the idea, and Turkey twice asked for bids to build nuclear power plants, only to have the bidding process fail. Recently, Turkey went ahead and signed an agreement for Russia to build the plant with no money up front, and operate the reactor for 30 years. During that period, receipts from energy production will pay off the construction costs.”

More recently, Saudi Arabia has also indicated that it might build a few reactors, but the United Arab Emirates appears to be the most advanced country in the region when it comes to pursuing a nuclear future.

Yet efforts by the UAE to join the nuclear-power club were frustrated by a controversy that had erupted back in 2006. That year, Dubai Ports World bought British shipping giant P&O. As part of that sale, DP World was to assume the leases of P&O to manage major U.S. port facilities in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Miami, as well as operations at 16 other ports.

However, once the transaction became public, many Democrats in Congress — along with a few powerful Republicans — questioned the deal on the grounds it could make the United States more vulnerable to terrorism. DP World eventually backed off from its plan, transferring operations to an unspecified American entity.

“It was a short-term political firestorm, and it left its mark,” said Graham. “This outcome was wrong and unfair, and was profoundly embarrassing to the UAE — to the point where even though the UAE believed that nuclear energy must be in its future, it proceeded very cautiously down that road, in the wake of Dubai Ports World controversy, knowing that eventually the program would end up being reviewed by Congress.”

As a senior diplomat, Graham — whose Lightbridge Corp. is based in McLean, Va. — helped negotiate every major arms control and non-proliferation agreement from 1970 to 1997 in which the United States was involved. In 2009, he was appointed to the International Advisory Board of the United Arab Emirates.

As such, the UAE established a regulatory agency, the Emirates Nuclear Energy Program, in 2009 and “staffed it with real experts,” he said. Soon after, it awarded a consortium led by Korea Electric Power Co. a $20 billion contract to build the first four nuclear power plants, with a commitment of having the first plant operating by 2017. This past May, construction began on a second plant, to be finished in 2018. If all goes according to plan, two more reactors will be built in 2014 and 2015, for completion in 2019 and 2020. All four will be located in Barakah, a desert site west of Abu Dhabi.

Despite the setbacks to the global nuclear industry which followed Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster — the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl — Graham insists the mammoth project will pose no threat whatsoever.

“The UAE is the first newcomer country for nuclear power generation in the last three decades,” he said. “It has persevered despite the shadow of Dubai Ports World. It is delivering its reactors on time and on budget. It is committee to the highest standards of safety, security and nonproliferation.”
Yet in the long term, a far cheaper and safer alternative may be solar energy.

Shihab Kuran is president of New Jersey-based Sun Edison Advanced Solutions. Last year, the company he founded, Petra Solar, installed solar panels on 20,000 rooftops throughout Jordan. He also launched the innovative Smart City project in Bahrain.

“Solar energy is one of the fastest-growing sectors in energy today, along with wind,” he said, noting that more than 700 solar sites have been interconnected to date. “The solar industry will receive over $1 trillion in the next seven to eight years, so it’s a massive growth area for us.”

One of solar’s biggest advantages over oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy is that the fuel itself — sunshine — is free.

“But the bulk of the investment is your upfront capital costs, so you have to ensure that you have a long-term view — modeling the megatrends in oil prices and geopolitical stability. With all these arguments for and against solar,” he said, “solar happens to be one of the biggest job generators on a per-megawatt basis.”

Kuran added: “When you look at oil production, the number of jobs are limited. And with nuclear, if you build a nuclear plan in a place like Jordan or Qatar, most likely you will have to import the technology. But with solar, you can build a factory in six to nine months. For a country like Jordan that imports 96 percent of its energy, it’s a straightforward case. You want to be energy-independent? Solar is the answer.”

Top image: Sikh foreman looks on as his workers repair a valve at the Faregh gas complex near Jalu, deep in the Sahara Desert.

All images by Larry Luxner, 2013.

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Sometime next summer, an airplane with the wingspan of an Airbus A340 but weighing not much more than a Toyota will fly from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., and on to New York. The history-making cross-country trip will be achieved without burning a single ounce of jet fuel — or any other fuel for that matter.

If the two Swiss pilots behind Solar Impulse can pull that off, their next goal will be even more ambitious: a round-the-world flight in 2015 lasting 20 to 25 days.

“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to understand the environment, to protect nature and to make a better life for humankind. Solar Impulse is exactly in that spirit,” said 52-year-old Bertrand Piccard, the project’s initiator and president. “We have an airplane that can fly day and night with absolutely no fuel. It’s important to show we can go from dreams to reality, and inspire people to make their own dreams come true.”

These lofty ideals are echoed by André Borschberg, the project’s CEO and co-founder. A businessman with a degree from MIT, Borschberg, 58, says “the time I spent in Boston allowed me to found startup companies. I know that dreams fuel innovation, and that human commitment and new technologies can really change the world.”

When it comes to results, Solar Impulse —a product of Swiss ingenuity and perseverance — has already achieved three world records. On July 8, 2010, the HB-SIA prototype succeeded in flying night and day for exactly 26 hours, 10 minutes and 19 seconds, with four hours worth of surplus energy still left in its batteries upon landing.

Less than a year later, HB-SIA spent flew to Brussels from its home base at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, cruising at an altitude of 6,000 feet during the 13-hour flight. And this past June, the same aircraft completed its first intercontinental trip, a 19-hour journey from Madrid to Rabat, Morocco.

On Dec. 12, the Swiss Embassy in Washington introduced Piccard and Borschberg to local media. The press event began with a three-minute video comparing their ambitious project to the Wright Brothers’ 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 transatlantic solo adventure in the Spirit of St. Louis, and Chuck Yeager’s 1947 breaking of the sound barrier in his rocket-powered Bell X-1 jet.

“Switzerland is very proud to be a partner in the next endeavor of Solar Impulse,” said Swiss Ambassador Manuel Sager. “As a country, we share the values of the project: technological innovation, competence and entrepreneurial expertise.”

Borschberg, an engineer who trained as a pilot in the Swiss Air Force, said Solar Impulse began in 2003 and grew into a collaborative effort involving 70 engineers and specialists.

“When we looked at the question of flying around the world, we immediately understood that we had to develop an airplane capable of flying day and night, collecting energy during the day, storing it and using as little as possible to continue the following day,” he explained. “We visited airplane manufacturers but were told that what we had in mind was impossible. So we decided to set up our own team and look for partners.”

Over the last nine years, the project’s backers have invested $120 million in Solar Impulse. Piccard — who in 1999 made the first-ever nonstop round-the-world balloon flight, landing in Egypt after a 45,755-kilometer flight lasting nearly 20 days — noted that “this is 4 percent of the budget of the Formula One team.”

The project’s main partners are Belgian chemicals conglomerate Solvay, Swiss watchmaker Omega, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Swiss elevator manufacturer Schindler. Other sponsors include French aircraft maker Dassault Aviation, the Paris-based European Space Agency and the International Air Transport Association.

“We need additional partners for the U.S. and round-the-world flight,” said Piccard. “If you wait until you have all the money in advance, you never start. Until now, we’ve had only European partners, so we would be most welcome to have American companies join us.”

HB-SIA’s specifications are impressive. With a wingspan of 63.4 meters, the aircraft weighs only 1,600 kilograms and boasts a maximum cruising altitude of 8,500 meters (27,900 feet). Four lithium polymer batteries weigh 100 kilograms each; together, they account for one-fourth of the aircraft’s total weight. According to a fact sheet, every unnecessary gram has been eliminated in order to build the super-light aircraft.

“The average speed is 40 knots, but the higher you fly, the faster you go,” Piccard told reporters. “You can take off with empty batteries, climb to 30,000 feet, fly 12 hours and fill up the batteries. During the day, the more you fly, the more energy you produce.”

Solar Impulse is built of composite materials, consisting of a carbon fiber-honeycomb sandwich structure. Its upper-wing surface is covered with a skin of embedded solar cells; 120 carbon-fiber ribs placed at 50-centimeter intervals give the wing is aerodynamic profile while ensuring its rigidity.

“We are focused on preparing for next year. We’ve had many discussions with authorities, and the response has been extremely positive. People are interested in this project,” Piccard said, noting that “if it had already been done 10 times, nobody would be here in this room listening to us.”
One reporter asked about the practical applications of using a solar-powered aircraft for long-haul commercial flights.

“We don’t see how it would be possible to transport 200 people without fuel, but when we see how fast aviation has evolved, maybe technology will allow it someday,” Piccard responded. “When Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in 1927, nobody believed that someday it would be possible to do the same with 200 passengers.”

To pull off the coast-to-coast achievement, Solar Impulse’s current prototype will have to be dismantled, flown across the Atlantic and re-assembled.

“We will take off from San Francisco, aiming for Washington and then New York. The route is not defined yet,” said Piccard, adding with a smile: “Washington is a second home for me, since the capsule of my balloon is displayed in the Air & Space Museum. Why should I take a hotel room here? I can sleep in my capsule.”

More Solar-Powered Goodness:
The World’s Largest Solar-Powered Boat Pays a Visit to Qatar
Markus Kayser’s 3D Solar Sinter Prints on Sand – Could Replace Concrete
Morocco Airport Counts Solar Power Carbon Savings

The post Would You Fly By Sun and a Solar Impulse? appeared first on Green Prophet.

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 National Synagogue” — is a trailblazer when it comes to eco-friendliness.

But step inside the capital city’s oldest Orthodox congregation, and you might notice a few new wrinkles: Modern LED-illuminated exit signs on the walls instead of the incandescent glass-covered ones that were there before. Brand-new T8 fluorescent lights rather than less efficient T12 lighting fixtures. Brightly colored recycling bins for plastics used in weekly Kiddush lunches. Individually adjustable air-conditioning units in the shul’s three offices — so the entire building doesn’t need to freeze just to keep those three offices comfortably cool.

Those little things add up to tens of thousands of dollars in potential energy savings. On May 16, the US Environmental Protection Agency will formally present Ohev Sholom its Energy Star achievement certification — meaning that the synagogue meets strict performance levels set by a government agency better known for regulating factory emissions and auto gas-mileage standards than presenting bronze plaques to houses of God.

“Ohev Sholom is proud to be the first synagogue in the country to earn the EPA’s Energy Star certification in recognition of our energy efficiency efforts,” said Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, whose shul (synagogue) was built in 1958 and has 300 member families.

Indeed, only 17 US religious institutions have won this certification since the program began in September 2009, and 16 of them are churches. Ohev Sholom is the only synagogue on the list — sandwiched alphabetically between Alabama’s Montevallo Presbyterian Church and Florida’s Plantation Baptist Church.

“This is the sort of distinction or bragging rights that means they are walking the talk,” says Jerry Lawson, EPA’s national manager for Energy Star small business and congregation networks. “They are practicing the energy stewardship that the faith tradition really teaches.”

A Big Green Star

The Green Star certification process, which began with Fortune 500 companies, is now available for office buildings, educational institutions, nursing homes and other public facilities. Earning that distinction simply means that a particular church or synagogue ranks in the upper 25% of energy efficiency of buildings of that type when measured in BTUs of energy use per square foot. And that also translates into savings of 25-30% when it comes to utility bills.

“Very often, the biggest energy savings come from low-cost or no-cost activities like being conscientious about maintenance, keeping filters clean or automating lights. A lot of these things are do-it-yourself,” said Lawson. “Typically, a lighting upgrade results in fairly radical savings, so we like to promote that.”

Jen Singer, who chairs Ohev Sholom’s Green Committee, said that soon after joining the shul in 2007, she started a recycling program, had the synagogue switch to eco-friendly cleaning supplies and launched an environmental education program for the children.

Last October, Singer and the shul’s executive director, Carol Valoris, began working on the energy component.
“I wanted to take the program to the next stage, so we joined the Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit organization that reaches out to houses of worship,” said Singer, an environmental consultant. “They did an informal energy audit in 2008 and found there were lots of places for us to make improvements, but we didn’t have a baseline of how much energy we consumed.”

Studying the energy bills

So Singer gathered together the synagogue’s utility bills for all fuel sources from 2008 to 2011. With help from EPA’s Portfolio Manager online tool, the synagogue used 2009 energy data as a baseline, with the period ending date of January 2010 and set a comparison year of 2010, with period ending date of January 2011.

Singer calculated specific ways the shul could cut its monthly electric bills, which often exceeded $2,000 a month.

For example, just changing the building’s 17 exit signs from those that use incandescent lamps to ones using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) cost Ohev Sholom $394.06 — but will save Ohev Sholom 102,244 kilowatt-hours, translating into energy savings of $10,424 over the lifetime of the product.

Consulted by rabbis, imams and preachers

“The rabbi has minyans three times a day. Because fewer people come to those than on Shabbat (Sabbath), he uses the small chapel rather than operate our giant sanctuary that’s 10 times as big, which we use on Shabbat and holidays,” she explained. “Synagogues that have the funds can put in solar panels, but they can also look at low-cost and no-cost measures to manage their buildings in a way that consumes less energy.”

The EPA’s Lawson said he’s spoken to rabbis, imams and preachers about making their respective houses of worship more energy-efficient.

In fact, the EPA is about to certify its first mosque, though Lawson wouldn’t say which one.

“One of the things we found that works really well is friendly competition. Some of my Reform and Reconstructionist friends have taken notice that an Orthodox synagogue was the first. Likewise, the Episcopalians and Methodists are saying they want to look good too,” he said. “We’re going to keep working with all the branches of Judaism until we get everyone in.”

More on the Jewish way of living green:

• Go off-line on Yom Kippur
• Avoid food waste on Passover (good advice anytime)
• Have a sweet and green Rosh HaShanah

This article was first printed by the Washington Jewish Week.

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Jordan, one of the five most water-deprived countries on Earth, has more than just a casual interest in developing technologies such as solar energy, water desalination and nuclear power. Its very survival depends on it. So says Alia Hatoug-Bouran, Jordan’s former environment minister and recently minted ambassador to the United States. But Bouran — the first woman ever to represent the Hashemite Kingdom in Washington — said Jordan can’t do it alone. To realize its full potential, she said, her thirsty desert nation of 6.3 million people needs U.S. and European investment, as well as a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement that encourages greater cooperation with neighboring Israel.

“When I graduated from Moscow State University in 1983, the environment at that time was not a priority,” she explained during an interview last month at the Jordanian Embassy. “Unfortunately, you see this in many parts of the world, particularly in Third World countries. The environment should, but doesn’t, have an important political role in decision-making.”

Bouran, who began teaching environmental science at the University of Jordan in 1984, was tapped in the early 1990s by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent Jordan in preliminary peace talks with Israel.

“I was assigned to the environment, in addition to the other tracks I was involved in,” she said. “When those talks concluded in 1994, there was such a beautiful sense of achievement. I never went back to the University of Jordan. This is how I started with my diplomatic career. After Jordan and Israel signed the [peace] agreement in October 1994, I stayed with the foreign ministry for another two years.”

During that time, Bouran served as Jordan’s representative to the Geneva-based International Union for Conservation of Nature, which ranks as the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network.

She went on to become secretary-general of Jordan’s Ministry of Tourism (1998-2001), followed by ambassadorial appointments to Luxembourg (2001-03), Norway (2002-03) and Belgium and the European Commission (2001-03).
Two cabinet posts followed — minister of environment (2002-04) and minister for tourism and antiquities (2003-07).

After serving in London, Bouran presented her credentials to President Obama on Sept. 14 last year.
Bouran, 55, is fluent in Arabic, English and Russian. She’s published 26 scholarly articles in the field of environmental sciences. Her husband, Ishaq, is an electronics engineer with his own company back in Amman. Their 22-year-old daughter Marian just graduated from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and their 18-year-old son just entered his first year of college in the United States.

A focus on desalination

“The most important thing we need right now is desalination plants,” she told us, noting that tens of thousands of Jordanian families receive potable water only once or twice per week. “This is not a luxury; it’s a necessity, and it’s vital for our development.”

Toward that end, in October the Jordanian government signed a $275 million compact with the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) that hopes to boost the supply of fresh water to Jordan’s poorest households.
At the Oct. 25 signing ceremony — attended by Bouran in her first official act as ambassador — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said U.S. taxpayer money will help nearly 2 million Jordanians gain regular access to clean water, many for the first time ever.

That, according to Bouran, “says a lot about the strength of our bilateral relationship and also reflects how highly the U.S. considers Jordan’s needs in terms of development.”

The MCC compact targets Zarqa, one of Jordan’s poorest cities, by rehabilitating the municipal water supply network for households and businesses and expanding wastewater collection network into neighborhoods lacking access to proper sewer systems.

Why US is committed to Jordan

“At a time when many families here in the United States are tightening their own belts and making difficult sacrifices, we are making this investment in your country because we believe in Jordan’s promise and we are committed to Jordan’s future,” Clinton said. “Americans understand that a prosperous Jordan is good for the region and good for the world.”

Bouran pointed out that Jordan is the only Arab country that meets the benchmarks of accountability for eligibility in the MCC (Oman’s application is pending).

Although the country has escaped the kind of popular uprisings threatening Arab autocracies such as Tunisia and Algeria, many of the same seeds of discontent permeate Jordan, including joblessness and high food and fuel prices.

In fact, the government — perhaps fearing the kind of unrest rocking Tunisia — recently announced a $169 million plan to slash the rising cost of fuel and basic commodities.

With limited natural resources and a per-capita GDP of $4,700, Jordan’s economy is heavily dependent of foreign investment and aid, particularly from the United States, a major benefactor for the past 60 years.

To that end, the United States is increasing its aid to Jordan by $100 million to help the cash-strapped government as it grapples with a record budget deficit of more than $2 billion. The grant is in addition to the $363 million in regular economic assistance to Jordan for the 2010 fiscal year; it has received nearly $7 billion in development assistance from the United States since 1952.

According to the State Department, those funds target areas such as education, access to water, resource management and conservation, energy, youth and poverty alleviation programs, maternal-child health, energy, governance, macroeconomic policy, workforce development, and competitiveness.

A longtime US ally, Jordan was also the first of the Arab League’s 22 member nations to sign a free trade agreement with the United States, back in 2000. That made it only the third such free trade agreement in US history, following similar FTAs with Israel and NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico.

“It’s important to show confidence in the Jordanian market, and that Jordan is able to deliver on international commitments,” Bouran said. “The FTA has attracted companies from all over the world to come and invest in Jordan, opening their eyes to our possibilities.”

In 2010, foreign investment in Jordan totaled $293.3 million, a 7.8 percent increase from the $272.1 million registered the year before, according to government statistics. Iraqi investment accounted for 23.8 percent of the total, followed by Bahrain (20.6 percent) and Saudi Arabia (12 percent).

Nuclear potential?

One area especially ripe for investment is nuclear energy, following the recent discovery of uranium deposits in southern and western Jordan, about 250 kilometers from Amman. A nuclear reactor could save the desert kingdom the 20 percent of its GDP now spent on importing fossil fuels from neighboring Iraq and other oil-rich countries. By 2030, in fact, nuclear energy is expected to supply one-third of Jordan’s rapidly growing electricity needs.

“We don’t have oil, but our uranium is of good quality, and there’s enough of it to build a reactor that could power water desalination plants,” Bouran explained, noting that the Israelis have raised no objections to the idea of a Jordanian nuclear power industry for civilian purposes — and neither have the Americans.

Khalid Touqan, chairman of the Jordan Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in a Dec. 14 public forum that a Jordanian-French venture has drilled 3,500 boreholes in the central region and has found most uranium deposits near surface level. He said Jordan also has the potential to convert 140,000 tons of uranium from the country’s vast phosphate reserves. “If we extract half of it, this will suffice us for the next 100 years,” he told journalists. Jordan has already signed nuclear cooperation accords with Algeria, Canada, China, Kazakhstan, Japan, Romania and Russia.

Published reports put the value of Jordan’s uranium reserves at around $7 billion. Touqan said his agency will soon float an international tender to invite bids for the design and construction of Jordan’s first uranium mine.
All that uranium makes nuclear power a viable option for Jordan — whose territory contains 2 percent of the world’s known reserves — not to mention the fact that nuclear plants are carbon-neutral and therefore do not contribute to global warming.

“For the first time in our history, we are sitting on a commodity that people are interested in,” King Abdullah recently told The Times of London. “A lot of countries are knocking on our door.”

In addition, Jordan has enormous potential for both solar and wind energy. It’s blessed with an abundance of sunshine and one of the highest annual daily averages of solar irradiance in the world — and some places in Jordan see wind speeds averaging 7 meters per second, compared to 4.5 meters per second for effective power generators. It also boasts untold billions of tons of oil shale deposits, though oil-shale extraction is hardly economical as long as crude oil prices remain relatively low.

Israel-PA conflict must be settled

But Jordan’s full potential cannot be unleashed until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is settled once and for all, says Bouran.

“I see the potential for great success when peace prevails in the Middle East. I see megaprojects in energy, infrastructure, communications, environmental protection, investment and trade,” she said. “We’d like to see Israel as part of the region, a country among countries — and not in the way Israel is acting right now. The benefits of peace are enormous, and the way we see achieving that peace is through the two-state solution, which Jordan has been working on for years.”

Asked what kind of relationship she has with Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren — whose embassy is less than half a block away from Jordan’s along International Drive — Bouran was rather vague.
“As part of my courtesy calls, of course I paid Michael Oren a visit,” she said. “I see most ambassadors of countries we work with — European ambassadors, Arab ambassadors, everyone.”

She added, without getting too specific: “We have to focus on the positive, and convince the international community that the two-state solution is the only way forward. This will give Israel the peace and security it deserves, and the Palestinians the state they aspire for. There’s no room to just let go.”

Despite the official absence of war that has now existed between Israel and Jordan for 16 years — and the fact that thousands of Israeli tourists now flock over the border every year to visit Petra and other archaeological sites once forbidden to them — few Jordanians have actually been to Israel, and even fewer have nice things to say about their Jewish neighbors.

According to a 2006 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 100 percent of Jordanians surveyed expressed unfavorable opinions of Jews. That compared to 99 percent of Lebanese, 98 percent of Egyptians, 88 percent of Moroccans, 76 percent of Indonesians, 74 percent of Pakistanis and 60 percent of Turks.

Official Jordanian government documents routinely omit Israel from maps of the region, and even the Jordanian Embassy’s own website leaves the name Israel off its index of overseas missions. Rather, Jordan’s embassy in the Jewish state is listed under “Telaviv” — right between Switzerland and Tunisia (though Bouran appeared genuinely surprised when told of the omission and said she’d take a look at it).

Connecting Dead with Red

In an irony not lost on environmentalists, perhaps the only project that has really brought Israel and Jordan together is a controversial — some say dangerous — scheme to bring water from the Red Sea 110 miles north to the Dead Sea, an incredibly salty, shrinking body of water shared by both countries.

Unfortunately, the inland sea, whose salinity hovers around 31 percent, is dropping by about three feet a year due to evaporation and the fact that its upstream sources, mainly the Jordan River, have been heavily dammed. Since 1960, the Dead Sea has fallen about 75 feet and lost one-third of its surface area.

The Red-Dead Canal, as it’s called, envisions sending nearly 2 billion cubic meters of water (about 500 billion gallons) north each year via a network of pipelines and tunnels, according to the Washington Post, with some of it desalinated en route and some used to reverse the Dead Sea’s declining water level.

An additional benefit: The ambitious $5 billion scheme would generate a huge amount of hydroelectricity, powering desalination plants with purified Red Sea water for drinking and agriculture.

Yet environmentalists warn that the Red-Dead Canal could destroy delicate coral life in the Gulf of Aqaba. They also worry that mixing the two types of water will trigger algae blooms or other unforeseen consequences.
Bouran seems undeterred. “I really hope this project will succeed. It’s not just a matter of giving life back to the Dead Sea, but also to the industries surrounding it.”

One of those industries is tourism, and Jordan has seen an explosion of hotels and spas along the Dead Sea as wealthy Gulf Arabs and Europeans flock to its healing waters, which have been curing sufferers of psoriasis and other ailments for centuries.

Bouran, who as tourism minister led efforts to make Jordan a leading international destination, said tourism is now the country’s top foreign-exchange earner.

In fact, Jordan’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said 7 million people visited the country during the first 10 months of last year, up 18 percent from the same period in 2009. Arab countries account for 1.7 million of last year’s total, with France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany and Spain also contributing heavily to overall tourist arrivals.
Even the threat of terrorism hasn’t dissuaded tourists from coming, noted Bouran, who remembers all too well the day in 2005 when al-Qaeda suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, killing 60 people and injuring another 115.

“The international solidarity was amazing,” she recalled. “One day after the bombing, a huge cruise ship was supposed to dock in Aqaba. The captain assembled everybody — all 2,000 passengers — and told them about the bombings, and that they could change the program and continue to the next port. Instead, the passengers voted unanimously to tour Jordan.”

For more green stories from Jordan see:
Jordanian Environmentalists to Fight Ajloun Forest Construction
Jordan Joins the Food Protest as Tunisian President Steps Down
Jordan’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Set For 2012 Inauguration
The Epic Sahara Forest Project in Jordan

Veteran journalist Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat and editor of CubaNews, a monthly newsletter on political and business developments in Cuba. He also writes frequently for The Middle East and Saudi Aramco World.

The post Jordan’s Envoy in Washington Outlines Environmental Priorities appeared first on Green Prophet.

Virginia’s largest electric utility is eagerly seeking Israeli “clean-tech” partners that offer innovative technologies aimed at slashing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels through the development of renewable energy sources like solar, wind, seawater and biofuels.

Dominion Resources GreenTech Incubator, based in Ashland, Va., is a nonprofit business incubation program formed by Dominion Resources, the Virginia Biosciences Development Center and two other local entities. David Lohr, the program’s executive director, will lead an official Virginia delegation to Israel on Jan. 6, with the goal of identifying three to five companies that could be ideal matches for the year-old venture.

“This is our first international effort, and we’re very excited,” said Lohr. “Our joint initiative tries to incubate and commercialize technologies in the clean-energy sector. We are hoping to replicate the success we had with Israeli life-sciences companies three years ago by moving into green-tech. This has been part of our strategy from the outset.”

The Virginia executive was one of three speakers at a Dec. 15 environmental symposium co-sponsored by the Israeli Embassy, Washington law firm ZAG/S&W and the U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Foundation.

Lohr, who formerly operated the life sciences incubator at Richmond’s Virginia Bio-Technology Research Park, said that “through our corporate affiliations, we provide a unique offering to those Israeli life-science companies wanting to enter the U.S. market with their products.”

Daniel Birns, an international advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy, said that while both the United States and Israel share “a common commitment to environmental stewardship, Israel is a little more ambitious than we are.”

The Jewish state — concerned about the long-term effects of climate change — has committed to reducing carbon emissions by 20% between now and 2020, while the United States has only committed to a 17% reduction.

“It’s clear we need to dramatically change the way we power our homes and businesses,” Birns told his audience of about 50 business executives, lawyers and U.S. government officials. “We need to invest in new grid systems capable of moving renewable energy from where it’s produced to where it’s used. And it’s not enough to do it just in our two countries. We need to do it globally.”

Since 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy and Israel’s Ministry of National Infrastructures have jointly funded innovative projects through BIRD — the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation.

Operating on a $4 million budget over the past two years, BIRD issues competitive soliciations for U.S.-Israeli ventures, funding up to 50% of the combined companies’ R&D expenses associated with the project. If it’s successful, BIRD claims royalties of up to 150% of the initial grant.

In the beginning, those pairings usually involved a large U.S. company and a small Israeli startup. But in the past year, big Israeli conglomerates have begun teaming up with smaller American startup firms.

In 2010, three collaborative projects were granted BIRD funds. They include Israel’s Panoramic Power Ltd., which along with San Francisco’s MNLB will develop and pilot self-powered, wireless sensors to facilitate load management strategies in commercial buildings.

Jerusalem-based OMAT Ltd., in cooperation with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Inc. of Scranton, Pa., will develop a system to monitor, control and economize energy consumption in metal machining industries.

And Tel Aviv-based HCL CleanTech Ltd. is partnering with Virent Energy Systems of Madison, Wis., to produce biogasoline from non-food sources.

Last year, HelioFocus Ltd. of Nes Ziona, Israel, took advantage of BIRD money to develop — along with Capstone Turbine Corp. of Chatsworth, Calif. — a microturbine that produces electric power from concentrated solar energy.

Tigo Energy of Kfar Saba came up with a complete Building Integrated Photovoltaic system with help from Architectural Glass and Aluminum Co. Inc. of Alameda, Calif.

And TransBiodiesel Ltd. of the Israeli town of Shfar-Am, working with Purolite Co. of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., designed a way to produce biodiesel fuel on a commercial scale.

“BIRD offers a conditional grant or loan that enables companies with breakthrough technologies to create value for both countries,” said Birns. “I can’t overstate how unique this model is. If we could replicate it elsewhere, we probably should.”

One of the most exciting projects underway involves Israel’s Seambiotic, which utilizes carbon-dioxide effluent from a coal-fired power plant in Ashkelon to grow microalgae, a feedstock for biofuels — in a project partially underwritten by Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

Asaf Vitman, minister for economic affairs at the Israeli Embassy, said the Jewish state could be a world center for the development of green technologies.

“We don’t have oil, but nature gave us the sun, so we try to develop products that can take the sun and create energy,” he explained. “Solar water heaters are on all our roofs. It’s nothing related to clean-tech or high-tech, but this saves us 3-4% of our energy bill every year. Over 40 years, that’s a lot of money.”

Likewise, said Vitman, “because Israel is a desert country, we have to manage our water very carefully. Thirty years ago we invented drip irrigation to promote agriculture in the desert. Most of our products are for export now.”

Vitman said Israel is on the verge of becoming a world leader in geothermal energy and electric vehicle technology as well. Even Israel Aircraft Industries — which manufactures airplanes — is getting into the act, with a pilot program on wind energy.

“We are also looking to collaborate with other countries. We have research projects going with the European Union, China and India. That’s very important for us because the market is worldwide, not in Israel,” he said, adding that “we’re looking to give huge incentives to startups. We are the startup nation, so now we have to move from IT to clean-tech to achieve our goals.”

Veteran journalist Larry Luxner is news editor of The Washington Diplomat and editor of CubaNews, a monthly newsletter on political and business developments in Cuba. He also writes frequently for The Middle East and Saudi Aramco World.

The post US Firms Look to Israel for “Clean-tech” Partnerships appeared first on Green Prophet.

BENGHAZI, Libya — Greg Cunningham is a long, long way from home. Since early 2004, the Colorado agribusiness consultant has lived in eastern Libya — growing wheat and corn irrigated with water piped in from the Sahara Desert. Cunningham, general manager of Technofarm International Ltd., holds the distinction of being the first American businessman in Libya once the doors opened. But risk-taking is nothing new for this 54-year-old entrepreneur, who’s lived and worked in at least 20 countries from Egypt to the Philippines.

“We did not have an ambassador here even a year ago, and a lot of American companies are uncomfortable investing in a country where there’s no active embassy,” Cunningham told The Diplomat. But he added that “Libya’s a very friendly place. Never in five years has anybody given me any trouble.”

Technofarm started in 2002 with 1,000 hectares of crops. Today, it has 10,000 hectares in the Benghazi area, another 5,000 hectares in Sirt, 400 hectares in Tarhona and a new 800-hectare project of intensively irrigated olive trees near Tarhona.

None of these crops would exist without the Great Man-Made River, which brings fresh water from underground desert aquifers to Libya’s coastal regions, making large-scale agriculture possible.

Cunningham’s life currently revolves around the Al-Khadra Irrigation Development Project, a joint venture between Nebraska-based Valmont Corp. (52 percent); Wisconsin-based Case New Holland (28 percent) and Libya’s government-owned Great Man-Made River Authority (20 percent).

The venture aims to produce 100,000 metric tons of corn and wheat a year — all of it for domestic consumption. At current market prices, this comes to between $25 million and $30 million. Total operating capital is roughly $5 million.

Under the venture, Food and Agribusiness Resource Management Co. (Farmco) supplies the seeds, chemicals and input, while the Great Man-Made River Utilization Authority supplies land, equipment and water.

Valmont, which used to employ Cunningham, is the world’s largest manufacturer of irrigation equipment, with a 50 percent market share for center pivots. Case New Holland is a division of Italy’s Fiat.

“This is a big step for both of them,” said Cunningham, interviewed at his field office about an hour’s drive from Benghazi. “I’ve been working with these companies for 20 years, and I’ve been trying to convince them that Africa is the direction they need to go.”

Cunningham said the project is long overdue for a rapidly growing country as bone-dry and thirsty as Libya.

Libya imports 90% of its food

“The choice was growing food in the south and bringing it north, or bringing the water north,” he said. “Libya imports almost 90 percent of its food. Now that the GMR is finished and there’s water available on the coast, there is great potential.”

Cunningham, noting that Col. Muammar Qaddafi visited one of his company’s projects in 2005, said the Al-Khadra venture requires 15,000 cubic meters of water per hectare per year. It draws its water from the nearby Omar Mukhtar Reservoir, which holds 24 million cubic meters and ranks as one of the largest reservoirs in the world.

He acknowledges that the Great Man-Made River is controversial, and that nobody really knows how long the underground aquifers will last.

“The TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] was controversial also,” he pointed out. “But if I were importing 90 percent of my food, I’d be worried from a security point-of-view — that’s a dangerous position to be in. Obviously, Libya is never going to be Iowa. But they could supply a larger percentage of their own food than they’re doing now.”

(This guest post is written by Larry Luxner, journalist and photographer.)

More on Libya and the environment:
Libya’s Great Man-Made River an 8th Wonder of the World
Libya and BP To Start Drilling for Oil
Boutique Solar Panels Fit For Mosques, Pipelines and Airports
A Sustainable Architecture Conference in Libya

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