Key investors in renewable energy for the Middle East and North Africa regions will be on hand to discuss the criteria for securing project financing. They will present the case studies of the Shams 1, a 100MW plant in Abu Dhabi and the Noor 1, a 160MW (being constructed in Morocco).
Desertification has gobbled up huge swaths of the Middle East and North Africa, a fact that Jerusalem-based industrial designer Shlomi Mir knows all too well. So he designed Tumbleweed Desert – a rolling robot capable of spending many solitary years in the desert gathering data aimed at slowing encroaching deserts.
![Danish zoo kills healthy giraffe to avoid inbreeding [video]](https://www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/marius-lion-copenghapen-shot-zoo.jpg "Danish zoo kills healthy giraffe to avoid inbreeding [video]")
In the latest tragedy for animal rights, and it happened in Europe, a Danish zoo has reportedly shot and killed a perfectly healthy giraffe which was given to the lions as food. The reason why Marius the giraffe was shot and killed:
Public awareness of healthy food products that are free of chemical additives, along with a worldwide demand to reduce industrial pollution, has led in recent years, to the development of organic farming. It is commonly presumed that organic agriculture causes only minimal environmental pollution.
If a tree falls in the woods, it will be immortalized as amazingly clever artwork if Fu’ad Khasawneh is anywhere nearby. The Assistant Dean and his colleagues at the University of Jordan transformed the detritus of a powerful winter storm into a remarkable display of public art.
A Facebook campaign called “She Wants a Bicycle Now” led by Syrian college students is getting young people on bikes in impressive numbers.
Africa’s largest silver mine has been operating in the Atlas mountains since 1969, but the Berber people living in the surrounding villages remain among the most poverty-stricken people in Morocco. Now Movement on the Road ’96 are living in an “occupation” camp to protest a silver mine’s water use and pollution.
I did the best part of my growing up in Toronto, a cold and somewhat bike-crazed city. It’s there where I met a champion bike courier from Berlin and had my first long-distance love affair when he moved back to Germany. Joern, god bless his heart, used to deliver love letters by international courier!
In an attempt to settle a business dispute, an Acre-based man from Israel placed a bomb on his enemy’s car and fled the scene using an electric bike.
Israel’s do-it-yourself (and environmentally friendly) soft drink maker SodaStream may go down in the record books as having created the most provocative Super Bowl commercial that never aired on TV, but it’s having a hell of an afterlife on YouTube, racking up over 11 million views since its Monday release.
Camel milk and camel burgers are attracting attention in the west, but these desert dwellers have been long-loved in the Middle East. Camels are the horses of the Middle East. Their domestication helped people in the region travel, build and communicate. But when did camels come to the Holy Land?
The bone-dry plains of the Western Sahara may be no place to plant a garden, but their extreme solar irradiance values render them ideal for solar farming. Morocco has persuaded foreign investors to underwrite a $9 billion solar power project.
Solar ovens are great, and we’ve seen a lot of them. But they are limited since they only work when it’s actually sunny. Sun BD Group has bridged that shortfall with a new hybrid solar electric oven that can whip up a great meal at any time of day and under any conditions.
When the sun is shining, the SunFocus uses that energy to cook up to 12 pounds of just about any food imaginable – cakes, bread, meat (if you must), more or less anything that you can cook in a conventional oven.
But thanks to its hybrid technology, it doesn’t lose functionality when a cloud slips in front of the sun, when its overcast, or after sunset.
Even though the SunFocus can be used as a grid-connected item, it still boasts high energy efficiency thanks to its low 465 wattage, which means that it uses about 75 percent less energy than the oven in most homes, according to the company.
Other great features include portability, which is especially important if the oven is to be used out in the field, and at just 30 pounds, it is lightweight enough for just about anyone to carry.
The three reflective panels are made from high grade aluminum and because they are double pane they retain heat for longer, increasing the oven’s overall energy efficiency.
Reaching up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, the oven has a built in thermostat that switches off the electricity when it isn’t needed, and it is easily converted to DC power with an inverter.
Sun BED Group has spent two years perfecting and testing their hybrid solar ovens, which not only performed well in the center of the Pentagon in 2011, but engineers from Chevron (yup!) have tested them in the field as well.
The results have been good, although the company is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to have their product certified by both EU and USA electrical certification bodies and it is unfortunately unlikely to meet its goal to raise $40,000. Update: it did not meet its goal and raised only about $2000 USD.
Said to be the first hybrid solar oven built in the United States, the SunFocus will eventually hit the foreign market as well, provided that the company is able to raise the necessary funds. Which we think they will.
And if they do, despite the oven’s relative high price of $489, we expect to see a fairly significant uptake by wealthier families in the Middle East region, where the sun shines bright almost all year long.
I’ve been cooking nonstop out of Nawal Nasrallah’s majestic cookbook, Delights From The Garden of Eden. And my family loves it, because every recipe yields a delicious dish. Like this one.
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