Taking an Idea and Turning it Into a Business: With Brian Mingham
These students take an idea like waste coffee grounds, test a hypothesis and if it works can turn science into a cleantech company. This is how business and eco can make an impact.
clean tech
World’s 25 biggest innovators are not from Silicon Valley!
Silicon Valley’s has its hoodie-wearing tech entrepreneurs as the poster kids of innovation and fundraising (read our guide on how to raise your first green capital here). You can find a similar story over in Silicon Alley New York (like at AlleyNYC), or in Tel Aviv, Israel. Disruption is the name of the game. But […]
10-year-old Emirati wunderkid already has 7 patents to his name
There seems to be a tremendous struggle happening in the Middle East – a fight between the good guys, like this 10-year-old Emirati wunderkid, and psychotic fundamentalists (along with a host of other corrupt elements.) The good maybe overwhelmed by the very worst bad guys there could be. And then there is the boy who […]
Jewelry that turns human veins into power source
Talk about being self-sufficient, but totally weird! Israeli student designer Naomi Kizhner has designed a collection of jewelry that harvests energy from veins in the human body. The project highlights in a beautiful and artful way how humanity is addicted to energy consumption. It may be a thought experiment more than anything, but these jewels provoke […]
Blowing Horn harvests wind energy with a multi-rotor turbine
Are you tired of seeing the same old giant wind turbines in a field or offshore? And do you worry about their impact on migrating birds? Hooman Tahvildar Akbary from Iran has a solution that is both super efficient and beautiful.
Segway-like device allows quadriplegics to ‘walk’ upright again
Sometimes, design really does change lives. Dr. Amit Goffer previously designed ReWalk, a device that gives paraplegics paralyzed from the waste down mobility again. But 90 percent of handicapped people are unable to use it. In order to give quadriplegics a similar new lease on life, the Israeli designer made a few modifications with UPnRIDE.
Turkey’s Designnobis turns plastic bottles into solar-powered lanterns
If you live in the Middle East, surely you are accustomed to seeing plastic bottles lining city streets and even far-flung desert areas. While a tiny fraction of these might be recycled in some countries, most of them will languish for years in informal and formal landfills.
NOMADD robots clean Saudi solar panels without using a drop of water
Saudi Arabia is a desert country with no freshwater resources. Every day the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) produces more than three million cubic meters a day of potable water, which requires a great deal of precious energy, so every drop must be conserved. Cue NOMADD.
Turkey subsidizes solar donkeys for shepherds
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a story pops up about donkeys in Turkey that carry solar panels so that shepherds, who are often out in the field alone for days at a time, have enough energy to power their laptops.
Saudi Arabia group makes pact with Masdar for green energy
Despite the turbulence tearing through the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have solidified their commitment to clean energy with the newly formed Framework Agreement on Strategic Cooperation between Masdar and King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (K.A.CARE.) It’s leadership we desperately need.
Israeli tech brings wireless phone charging to Starbucks
Starbucks recently announced a plan to rollout access to wireless charging technology developed by Israel’s Powermat — in all stores across the United States.
Massive solar panel factory opens in Qatar, long overdue
Qatar Solar Energy has unveiled a massive factory that will produce high quality solar panels that make the most of the desert sun, a boon not just for the emirate, but potentially for the entire Middle East.
Students tackle ‘space elevator’ design challenge in Israel
In 1895, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed to build a space elevator that could reach from Earth into space; it never got off the ground, but in 1957 another Russian – Yuri Artsutanov – came up with a more plausible idea. It wasn’t built either, but now he has a chance to judge a team of Israeli students who are tackling the concept […]
Phinergy tests range-extending aluminum-air battery for EVs in Montreal
The world’s third largest producer of aluminum has teamed up with Israel’s Phinergy to produce a new battery that would make electric vehicles as cost effective as gas- or diesel-fueled vehicles and significantly extends vehicle range.
Solar Roadways: energy-generating roads that light up at night
What if asphalt roads around the world were replaced with modular panels that generate energy during the day and light up at night? Our air would be cleaner and we would spend much less money on fossil fuels. Turns out, thanks in part to a compelling Indiegogo campaign, Solar Roadways may be coming to a highway near […]
Studio Cheha’s awesome optical illusion makes flat LED lamps look 3D
Studio Cheha’s Nir Chehanowski has designed an extraordinary flat LED lamp that looks three dimensional. Called Bulbing, the lamp is made of high quality materials and manufactured locally in Tel Aviv. It looks like a bulging three dimensional bulb, but actually it’s only 5mm thick and 100 percent flat. Studio Cheha uses a laser cutting process to cut out […]
Meditative LED bowl lamp recharges with circular motions
Shlomi Mir is one of Israel’s most visionary designers whose recent tumbleweed anti-desertification project earned him a Lexus Design Award alongside giants like Toyo Ito. But its his beautiful rechargeable LED bowl lamp that we are drooling over today – an elegant combination of art, design, tradition, technology and even spirituality.
Pistachios could power an entire new “eco-city” in Turkey
Turkey is floating plans to build a new “eco-city” in the southeastern corner of the country, near the border of Syria, and green building experts from Gaziantep want to use energy from burning pistachio shells to keep it running.
Hyper-absorbent diapers made from jellyfish biodegrade in under 30 days
Until you have babies, the true awfulness of diapers doesn’t really set in. But ask the modern parent, who will buy up to 2,800 mostly non-biodegradable diapers in their baby’s first year. Then they will chuck most of them in the trash. Cine’al has at least one solution: hyper-absorbent diapers made with jellyfish.
StoreDot’s Flash Battery charges cell phones in 30 seconds flat
StoreDot is the latest Israeli startup to wow the world with a groundbreaking new charger that takes a cell phone battery from 27 percent to 100 percent in 30 seconds flat.
Ecoppia’s waterless robots clean solar panel dust in Israel
Solar parks in the desert face two major challenges: a lot of dust on the photovoltaic panels and not enough water to clean them. Dust can cause up to a 40% decrease in efficiency of the panels. So there is huge interest to avert this problem. Normally teams of humans come in with squeegees to […]
Collapsible woven refugee shelters powered by the sun
More than 40 million people worldwide have been displaced from their homes and left to find shelter in strange lands. Maybe they find a tarp, or a tent, but their quality of life almost always remains dismal. To close this gap in need, Jordanian-Canadian architect and designer Abeer Seikaly designed a new kind of shelter. […]
Masdar sues Spain over solar energy subsidy cuts
Masdar has sued the Spanish government. The multi-pronged company funded in part by the government of Abu Dhabi helped build the world’s first 24/7 solar power plant in Spain, a feat made possible in part with subsidies. But Spain has now cut incentives for renewable energy, which eats into Masdar’s investment.
BrightSource’s Ivanpah, the world’s largest solar thermal project, is live
It has been a long, controversial and expensive road for BrightSource Energy, but their 392 megawatt concentrating solar plant is now finally delivering renewable energy to the California grid and it is the largest plant of its kind in the world.
Wind-powered Tumbleweed robot rolls back encroaching deserts
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.