Six Gulf states hook up for profit A few years late, phase two of the long-planned GCC Grid was inaugurated this week. When all four sections are complete it will unite the six Gulf nations on one unified electric grid, making it much easier to build and share power from renewable energy sources, and realize […]
District cooling is already super green. Now Ahmad Bin Shafir plans to take the mission one step further Wild and crazy Dubai is hardly known for sensible conservation of scarce resources, but CEO Ahmad Bin Shafir could change all that with a radical new approach to keeping cities cool. His rapidly growing company Empower already […]
BrightSource Energy has two new mega solar thermal projects in “advanced development” in California, according to its recent filing with the SEC. Rio Mesa Solar is planned on a 6,000 acre site, and Hidden Hills Ranch in Riverside County is a solar thermal project on 10,000 acres with a rated capacity of 500 MW. Rio […]
According to its recent filing with the SEC, BrightSource Energy has control of approximately 110,000 acres suitable for solar development in California and the U.S. Southwest with the potential to produce approximately 11 GW (11,000 MW) of installed capacity. The total capacity supplied to California – from all forms of electricity – both from in-state […]
Yemen has the dubious distinction of being the first country that is expected to entirely run out of water, as the globe heats up. Its capital city Sana’a could be the first city to be emptied of its nearly half a million inhabitants by the catastrophic water scarcity that threatens billions by the the 2030s, […]
Oil giants are looking into CCS to cut greenhouse gases. good for them! But who should pay for it? Well, now we know why Saudi Arabia held out for Carbon Capture & Storage to be eligible for CDM funding at Cancun. Sequestering CO2 in the ground is being looked at by three Middle Eastern countries, […]
Is the vast benefit of clean energy given accurate weight against the costs to one species of tortoise? BrightSource Energy‘s 392 MW Ivanpah solar project, now under construction, has met another obstacle. With the discovery of more tortoises than expected on the land, tortoises are halting part of the pioneering solar project, according to Ucilia […]
Installation of a planned 20 GW of solar over the next 20 years will catapult Saudi Arabia to world leadership in solar Saudi Arabia has set a staggering national goal to have 20 GW (20,000MW) of solar generation installed over the next twenty years, according to Saudi officials speaking to CSP Today. Although there have […]
California loves BrightSource Energy. Now, with a $250 million IPO we all have a chance to show how much. A sign of just how capital intensive it is building new solar thermal infrastructure – was revealed today when BrightSource Energy filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $250 million in an initial […]
BrightSource vs. the desert tortoise. Is BSE too big to fail? Shortly after Google announced its largest investment to date in BrightSource Energy’s gargantuan solar thermal project, the Californian company filed its first $250 million public offering on Earth Day. Forbes calls this an initial test of the market’s appetite for utility-scale solar energy. A […]
California’s gigantic aqueduct that snakes through the entire state to irrigate farms is probably the world’s best site for developing solar on bodies of water. According to Todd Woody at the New York Times, who asks, Could the California Aqueduct serve as a solar farm? Israel’s Solaris Synergy estimates that its floating solar system could […]
Unsurprisingly, since water scarcity is at the forefront of the cause of most of the troubles in the Middle East, MENA nations dominated the 2011 Global Water Awards held in Berlin this week. Almost half of the international winners were from the Middle East, but surprisingly, traditional fossil-fueled water projects dominated the awardees. Advanced cleantech […]
This green toilet by Noa Lerner will be a boon for third world countries that lack sanitary public waste facilities. While other industrial designers merely tweak the appearance of the latest electronic gadget to make minor improvements to trivial point-of-sale appeal, Israel’s Noa Lerner, a Berlin-based industrial engineer, is developing a much more crucial necessity: […]
$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 […]
Google Invests $168 million in BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System Google has announced that it will invest $168 million in BrightSource Energy’s Solar Energy Generating System in the Mohave desert. Following a series of fits and starts dictated by the energy politics du jour, the world’s largest solar power plant finally broke ground […]