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“Desert Cube” Greens Urinals by Eliminating Flushing

Hannah Katsman
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“Desert Cube” Greens Urinals by Eliminating Flushing

urinals in a row
New technology breaks down minerals in urine to keep urinals dry and clean.

Eliminating the use of clean water for flushing toilets is important everywhere, but especially in the water-parched Middle East. Ever wonder why urine needs so much water to flush it down? It’s liquid, after all. But ammonia and residue is smelly and the minerals in the urine build up on the urinal or toilet bowl. That’s why an Australian company distributing in Israel has invented the DesertCube and a novel way to eliminate up to 95% of the water needed for flushing urine.

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Trees That Don’t Stand a Chance Against Climate Change

Karin Kloosterman
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Trees That Don’t Stand a Chance Against Climate Change

The answer to climate woes for pines and and maples may be blowing in the wind.

Sad news so soon after the Jewish New Year for the trees: Many tree species might become extinct due to climate change if no action is taken in time: This is the conclusion of a new research study from the Hebrew University.  According to the research, trees which disperse their seeds by wind, such as pines and maples, will be unable to spread at a pace that can cope with expected climate changes.

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BrightSource Joins Last Minute Renewables Rush in Greece to Head Off EU Fines

Susan Kraemer
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BrightSource Joins Last Minute Renewables Rush in Greece to Head Off EU Fines

brightsource greece Greece has been no Sweden, Germany, Finland, Denmark or Portugal, when it comes to the new cleantech economy. That is changing fast. Look who’s applying for deployment.

As an EU member, Greece has come up against its deadline to start to comply with the EU directive to get 20-30% renewable energy on the grid by 2020, so under the direction of  glamorous physicist Tina Birbili, the new and savvy Minister of Environment, Energy & Climate Change, the coal-dependent nation is now actively seeking renewable energy.

Indeed, Greece has now pledged to raise renewable electricity to 40% by 2020 (which is quite the proposition. To me in the US, it is as if one of the coal-dependent red states in the US were to pass a 40% renewables by 2020 plan!)

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Sea Census Locates 1200 New Marine Species in World’s Oceans

Maurice Picow
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Sea Census Locates 1200 New Marine Species in World’s Oceans

sea cucumberNew species of sea cucumber, found in Atlantic Ocean at depth of 2,700 feet.

A newly concluded Census of Marine Life, covering most of the world’s seas and oceans, has discovered over 1,200 new species of sea creatures. The ten year study, completed in October, 2010, was composed of 3,000 scientists from 80 countries, including a few from Israel, and cost $370 million USD. The study was the first of its kind to make a thorough census and categorization of sea creatures, ranging from the smallest micro-biological specimens to the largest fish and mammals.

The scientific teams found a number of new marine species in the Mediterranean, including a multi-celled creature capable of living without oxygen (found on the sea bottom south of Crete) and a number of sea plants, fish and bacteria, unknown until now.

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“Forgotten” Arab Israeli Town Gets Chance to Change Eco-Image

Maurice Picow
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“Forgotten” Arab Israeli Town Gets Chance to Change Eco-Image

arab israel coastal townJisr al Zarka, as seen from Tenenim Stream estuary

Anyone visiting Israel’s remaining coastal Arab town, Jisr al Zarka may notice almost immediately how different  it is from its more affluent neighbors, Caesarea and Kibbutz Maagan Michael. For Jisr al Zarka, a town of almost 13,000 inhabitants, does not have a bank or ATM machine, a public transport line to it, and those who enter or leave it must do so by means of either a tunnel under the main coastal highway, or a small bridge leading to the adjoining Tenanim Stream nature reserve.

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Masdar’s Futuristic Eco-Pod-Car Has Arrived – Fasten Your Seatbelts!

Zaufishan
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Personal Rapid Transit
The Personal Rapid Transit system – all-electric, driver-less pod cars that ferry denizens around Masdar along magnetically guided lines.

Back in 2008, Abu Dhabi proved to be a competitive ‘playground’ for futuristic but eco-friendly transport. In eager aims to test-drive their new inventions Masdar City is one of the hot locations chosen to host the Pod car. Masdar City itself is almost entirely powered by renewable energy and heralded by UAE’s sheikhs as the hope for greener living. The Pod car, or Personal Rapid Transit, is the most energy-efficient, urban mass transit system to date, which is also an economic and a fully-automated alternative to the current public transport systems.

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Compost N’ Cycle – All In A Day’s Work

Tafline Laylin
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Compost N’ Cycle – All In A Day’s Work

reCYCLISTS-Canada-CompostGood ideas deserve to be shared. The reCYCLISTS in Victoria, B.C., cycle organic waste to a central facility, where the compost is eventually sold.

There is nothing like the internet for sharing good ideas. Every so often a good one that originated outside of the Middle East is too good not to share. Like buying and selling meals cooked in your own neighborhood, or this brilliant chamber pot/watering can. The value of composting is beginning to be understood in the Middle East. Abu Dhabi even plans to compost oil waste. But sometimes lacking are good systems for collecting neighborhood compost. British Columbia has come up with a genius solution to that very problem.

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Abu Dhabi to Compost its Oil Industry Wastes

Susan Kraemer
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Abu Dhabi to Compost its Oil Industry Wastes

abu dhabi waste compost oilAbu Dhabi is to green up desert oil fields using composting of waste products, including those from the oil industry itself.

The French start-up company Microhumus Analysis & Engineering made the announcement that this year it will begin field trials in Abu Dhabi of a novel technology  to compost oil-contaminated desert land, at this week’s World Future Energy Summit. The annual conference, held since 2008 in Masdar City, is becoming the international carbon-neutral innovation hub of the renewable energy and sustainable development industry. Microhumus Analysis & Engineering is among the most interesting of the many international cleantech innovators displaying their low-carbon wares at the summit.

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Solar Desalination Tech Tested By Emiratis

Maurice Picow
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solar desalination

Hopefully, the UAE’s new solar energy desalination process will help create more green water.

Abu Dhabi’s Environment Agency is testing a new solar energy desalination system that is much more environmentally friendly, as well as less costly, according to the English language Dubai News. The process is said to be a “zero-carbon process which helps reduce cost of water treatment, especially in desert areas where dust and high temperatures impair the efficiency of solar panels used in the existing desalination system.”

Desalination is now the major provider of fresh water in the UAE, and is still so costly that Abu Dhabi and other UAE locations are seriously looking into waste water recycling and treatment as a means to reduce the reliance on desalination to provide their fresh water needs.

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All Oil And Too Much Play: Bahrain’s “Sustainability” Conference

Tafline Laylin
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All Oil And Too Much Play: Bahrain’s “Sustainability” Conference

ritz-carlton-bahrainA Ritzy venue for Bahrain’s sustainability conference planned for January 27th and 28th.

Because Bahrain is so small, the island state is almost easy to ignore. Except that it is a financial hub for the Persian Gulf States, and therefore exerts a certain amount of influence.

Hence, a sustainability conference sponsored almost exclusively by companies such as Chevron, Air France, Kanoo Plastics, and PJ Investments (HK) Asia – despite its environmental film component – is laden with unhappy irony.

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Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind? How Egypt Cleans Up

Tafline Laylin
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Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind? How Egypt Cleans Up

cement-factory-helwanPolluting factories will be relocated out of Cairo at their own expense. Will they simply trash their new home? Or will the government encourage them to clean up their act?

Widely criticized for its smog and congestion, despite its central, green “lung” – the Al-Azhar park – Cairo is desperate to clean up its city. As it turns out, entrenched as industries are, that is no easy feat. The Cairo 2050 “Cleaner, Greener, Better” plan has already ruffled resident feathers as thousands will be forced out their homes. Now the Helwan Governorate intends to relocate industrial polluters too, a good thing, at their own expense, a little more tricky.

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Clever Human-Powered Transport Proposed for Low Carbon Masdar City

Susan Kraemer
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Clever Human-Powered Transport Proposed for Low Carbon Masdar City

Minneapolis Rollerblade Inventor Wants Masdar Biking Monorail Skyways

Why can’t getting around be as safe and comfortable as sitting in a car, and yet be something of a workout too? Scott Olson, the athletic Minnesota inventor of Rollerblades and the Rowbike, has come up with yet another way to do just that, and his company has a presence at the internationally attended World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week to promote the idea and help ween the UAE off fossil fuels with his SkyRide Technology. His SkyRower and SkyRide Technology allow you to safely propel yourself through the sky, at up to ten miles an hour, suspended under a monorail.

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Wind Giant Vestas Gives Half of its $1.5 Million Zayed Prize to Other Renewable Innovators

Susan Kraemer
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Wind Giant Vestas Gives Half of its $1.5 Million Zayed Prize to Other Renewable Innovators

vestas wind energyThe Zayed Future Energy Prize is like the Nobel Prize for solutions to climate change.

An extremely select jury of international experts in climate change solutions, headed up by IPPC chairman, Nobel prizewinner Dr Pachauri, decided that the Danish wind giant Vestas should be the winner of this year’s Zayed Future Energy Prize, which honors the environmental vision of the late founder and former President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan.The competition is intended to foster the innovation, long-term vision and leadership in renewable energy and sustainability that the world is in desperate need of. But the thing about innovators is that they innovate. Vestas did something surprising with its $1.5 million Zayed prize.

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Israel sends wrong message about desalination

Lisa Damast
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Israel sends wrong message about desalination

hadera desalination plant photo israel

Construction has begun in Israel on the world’s largest reverse osmosis desalination plant. What about water conservation and recycling?

SDL Desalination Ltd, a company owned by IDE Technologies and Hong Kong’s Hutchison Water, announced earlier this week that it has begun construction on the world’s largest reverse osmosis desalination plant. The plant, slated to be ready by 2013, is the final one of three that are intended to meet 44% of Israel’s water needs in 2013.

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Energy-Generating Pyramids Win Abu Dhabi’s LAGI Prize

Tafline Laylin
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Energy-Generating Pyramids Win Abu Dhabi’s LAGI Prize

lunar-cubit-abu-dhabiThese are no ordinary pyramids. When built, eight orbiting solar-paneled pyramids surrounding one larger “earth” will generate enough energy to power 250 Abu Dhabi homes.

For months we’ve been teetering at the edge of our seats waiting to learn who will win the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) design competition. Finally, our waiting is over.

This morning, at the ongoing World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi, Masdar’s Associate Director of Sustainability, Dr. Nawal Al Hosany, awarded the first place prize to the design team responsible for the Lunar Cubit.  Second Place Mention went to the Windstalk, and Third to Solaris.

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