Masdar - the Eco-city - is home to the hottest and most energy efficient transport system in the world: The Personal Rapid Transit (pod car). The PRT is fast, powered by lithium batteries, driverless, can carry up to 10 people safely and looks oh so beautiful in the gleaming sun... Check out more here.
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 […]
Masdar energy conference started this week. The Fourth World Future Energy Summit hosted by Masdar opened this week bringing out many of the world’s foremost influencers and thought leaders on renewable energy, including heads of state, policy makers, government officials, business leaders, technologists, financiers and academics. All have travelled from corners of the world to […]
Iceland’s President Olafur Grimsson at Masdar conference:”Renewable Energy is the way of the future” Iceland is a small country which recently came into “prominence” when one of its volcanoes caused a huge volcanic ash cloud to ground commercial airline flights for nearly a month last spring. But all this potential energy is also resulting in […]
Clinton’s visit came one week before Abu Dhabi hosts its annual World Future Energy Summit. Green Prophet has presented a number of negative assessments of Masdar and Abu Dhabi’s ambitious efforts to build a carbon-free city. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have missed or dismissed these reports. During a visit to Masdar City […]
The annual Zayed Future Energy Prize, named for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founder of modern Abu Dhabi who died in 2004, recognizes pioneering work in the field of renewable energy. Six finalists have been selected from an original pool of nearly 400 nominees for the 2011 Zayed Future Energy Prize. The winner […]
When it comes alive, the Penyon Bay Ecovillage will overlook the Bay of Alhoceima in Northern Morocco. As economies and ecosystems degenerate, and spiritual malaise increases (as I’ve pointed out in my green Christmas wish list), communities worldwide are forming new bonds. Moving away from the consumer model, ecovillages incorporate various degrees of the old […]
What happens when Norman Foster and Steve Jobs get together? The City of Apple, of course. Recently my macbook perished on the coast of Kenya. It was a terrible moment. All the images, music and words accumulated over four years flashed before my very eyes. There was no light to be seen, only a dark, […]
The carbon-neutral Masdar City seems to have been a concept for forever, it seems. In my mind, it has long been filed under “noble theory.” So I was surprised to get an email from Foster+Partners today. The Architects responsible for the Masdar Institute matter-of-factly announced the opening of the first building in the visionary city-to-be […]
Since the hype clearly failed, Masdar and Foster and Partners have turned to the nuts and bolts of building a sustainable city instead. Masdar and Foster and Partners (F&P) have eaten several servings of humble pie in the last few months. After a barrage of criticism related to the costs and failed expectations of Abu […]
Masdar students will soon be able to take a break from their hot, clean energy studies for a workout and a swim. Despite widespread criticism leveled at its organizers (which has simmered down since reaching its zenith with a New York Times article earlier this year), the Masdar City project plods on. Still in the […]
An interview that is supposed to shed light on Masdar’s real progress does little more than reorganize the project’s rhetoric Following a recent New York Times article that at once lauds and mocks the infamous Masdar Project, and a new Masdar Institute student’s claim that she feels like she is “living on a spaceship,” Middle […]
American engineering student Laura Stupin spends her first week on Masdar’s Mothership. Never mind the trumped up press releases that claimed for Masdar a zero carbon, zero waste, car-free city, or the derisive press that followed. And forget the original ambition to complete such unrealistic goals by 2015. Fast-forward instead to October, 2010, just over […]
“Cancer City”: Even if Masdar City does materialize against all odds, Nicolai Ouroussoff doubts its relevance to the rest of the sustainable world. The New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has diverted the Masdar City argument from a project that might not lift off – the laughing stock of the Middle East – to something […]
Masdar City has experienced knee-buckling setbacks, but we haven’t heard the last of them just yet Masdar City is hanging on tenterhooks. After questioning the dicey science of carbon credits for big energy companies, we then published assurances by Masdar’s CEO Sultan Al-Jaber that although the project will be delayed because of certain hiccups – not […]