Saudi Arabia is looking to continue to ensure their promises of bolstering the Gulf Kingdom’s alternative energy is maintained. This month, Masdar CEO Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber said publicly that his United Arab Emirates-based company is discussing potential investments in Saudi, and will likely be focusing on solar energy. For Masdar, which has boosted its clean […]
Morocco’s Solar Energy Agency has announced that the Saudi-led consortium ACWA has won the bid to build a 160MW concentrated solar power plant in Ourzazate. Although MASEN head Mustafa Bakkoury only made the official announcement at a recent conference, news of the win has been floating around for a couple of months. Teaming up with […]
The rich and famous are now buying private submarines. Good or bad for the environment? Brian explores. My search for bamboo yarn took me to an industrial part of Beijing. The air here smelled of hot steel and coal. I walked past some of the warehouses and workshops behind the Made in China label and […]
None of Egypt’s pyramids existed. Khafre wouldn’t commission the Great Pyramid of Giza for another 1500 years. But some time around 4000 BCE an Egyptian artist discovered the secret. This secret was the wonderful alchemy which transformed sand, ash, calcite lime, copper and fire into a lustrous blue-green gem worthy of the pharaohs. Faience, also […]
The Masdar Institute (MI) has teamed up with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) headed by Denmark’s former Prime Minister, and the Research Institute for Industrial Science and Technology (RIST) from South Korea to develop a 100% renewable energy micro-grid in Abu Dhabi. MI initially proposed the micro-grid idea to GGGI, which is chaired by […]
Four Turkish students collaborated to design Washit – a combined shower and washing machine that makes those 15 minute showers almost guiltless. Responding to the combined woes of water scarcity and excess water use in the bathroom, Ahmet Burak Aktas, Adem Onalan, Salih Berk Ilhan and Burak Soylemez created a shower box that collects, cleans, and […]
Determined to stay its unpopular nuclear course, Iran is now turning to wind power and other renewable energy sources to blow past sanctions. Last year Karin reported that the current regime plans to produce 5,000 MW of solar energy by 2015, and in May this year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put aside an additional $620 million […]
Ridding Israel’s environment of the poop of chickens and cows is a fabulous way to usher in the Jewish New Year. Once it becomes fully operational in the next few months, the recently inaugurated Be’er Tuviya biogas plant will scoop up the waste of 14,000 cows and in total roughly 15% of all chicken and dairy farms […]
In teddy bears, iPhones and baby sleep monitors: turn off those LED lights at night before they affect your sleep cycles and health! Professor Abraham Haim, an authority on the biological effects of light pollution, presented his findings at the International Congress of Zoology (ICZ) in Haifa Israel. World experts discussed, “Light Pollution and its […]
Designers from Israel hope to install a solar-powered doomsday clock in Times Square, where it will count down to 12-21-2012. Using cutting-edge technology, including concentrated photovoltaic power and LED lights, the glowing four meter globe is designed to harness humanity’s attention in the lead up to the so-called end of times. But there’s a twist. […]
Silver, gold, oil, stocks, bonds, real estate! I won’t pretend to know more than the investment experts, but many people lost a lot of money following their advice. Why have these experts overlooked a resource that is guaranteed to rise– even if only within the confines of a lost balloon? Yes I’m talking about helium! […]
MIT student Otto Ng proposes to solar-power the Arabian peninsula with more than 10,000 square kilometers of Powerscape – a tensile solar-collecting canopy comprised of inflatable mirrors. The problem with solar power, says Ng in a TED presentation, is the great amount of space required to produce the same amount of energy as a conventional […]
Google does it again: sliding big history lessons into my idle internet surfing. This week in Jordan, the Google image was of Middle Eastern pharmacist, physician and alchemist, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, the preeminent man of science of his time, and beyond. If Guinness doled out world records in Razi’s day, this 9th century Persian would best swimmer Michael Phelps […]
Sol Chip’s technology will allow small devices to run indefinitely without replacing and disposing of those silly lithium batteries. A tale of two wafers: Both begin as 99.9999999 percent pure silicon, one of the basic ingredients in desert sand. A furnace melts the silicon and controls the cooling and growing of a mono-crystalline cylindrical ingot which is […]
While solar advancements continue apace, wind energy technology has remained fairly stagnant over the years, making it in most cases less viable than fossil fuels or nuclear energy. It’s expensive, harmful to birds and bats, deeply inefficient and comes with a host of annoyances such as noise and vibration. Responding to what they perceive as […]