REPS announced a $23.6M equity financing round to scale its Road Energy Production System, a patented “road power plant” that converts vehicle traffic into electrical energy. For years, Green Prophet has followed the strange, persistent dream of harvesting energy from roads. Back in the early 2010s, Israel experimented with piezoelectric roads in Tel Aviv, when […]

The post Collecting kinetic energy from roads; REPS turns traffic into a power plant appeared first on Green Prophet.

For oil-rich, environmentally vigilant Gulf states, Astro isn’t just another startup story. It is a blueprint for accelerating an energy transition that is now existential, not optional.

The post Astro uses AI to help procure land for renewable energy appeared first on Green Prophet.

Discover top alternatives to SiteGround that offer impressive features and performance. Make an informed choice for your hosting needs today!

The post Don’t Regret Your Host: Alternatives to SiteGround That Impress appeared first on Green Prophet.

Sonol, a company that operates regular petroleum-based fuel stations in Israel, has opened the country's first hydrogen fuel station in the Haifa Bay.

The post Israel opens first hydrogen fuel station appeared first on Green Prophet.

Your eco business was already running on a dream and a prayer. How can you make it sustainable and profitable with devops?

The post The Beginner Business Owner’s Guide to Learning & Succeeding with DevOps appeared first on Green Prophet.

(Example of a pellet stove from Canada, and the chips and pellets they burn). Pellet stoves take condensed biological matter –– wood or biomass pellets –– to create a source of heat for residential and industrial spaces. They burn slower, for more time and can lower the heating bills. Environmentalists see pellet stoves as a “green” […]

The post Can you power wood stoves with olive wood pellets? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Close to 60% of Israel’s land mass lies under desert. Lots of sand. And lots of sun. Resolving to view how Israel exploits that solar abundance, I traveled through the Negev on a late-winter day in March with Ofer Tsimmering, head of the demographics department of the Ramat HaNegev Regional Council. I watched the highway […]

The post Clean Electricity Flows From The Negev Desert appeared first on Green Prophet.

As of posting time for this story, pilot André Borschberg had been flying for over 24 hours on Leg 7 (of 12) of the Solar Impulse 2 trip around the planet.  He’s completed about a quarter of his journey from Nanjing to Hawaii, the longest segment of this record-shattering expedition. And it’s all made possible […]

The post Solar Impulse flying longest leg of round-the-world-journey appeared first on Green Prophet.

Solar energy projects for developing countries in Africa and the Middle East MENA Region have often been put on the backburner due to financial considerations as well as lack of attention by local government bodies. Whether it has involved sophisticated solar “farms” or small solar devices for barefoot Bedouin women,  more attention is being focused […]

The post Practical Solar Powered Innovations for Developing Countries appeared first on Green Prophet.

Finding a solution to the problem of raw sewage reclamation in rural Palestinian communities continues to be an ongoing issue. A new peace project between an Israeli treatment company Mapal Green Energy and the Palestinian Authority could sweeten tensions behind a stinky problem.  When we covered a joint Israel-Palestinian project to tackle sewage problems in December, 2012 […]

The post Israel’s Mapal Promotes Peace by Treating Palestinian Sewage appeared first on Green Prophet.

An ambitious collaboration between Egypt and renewables giant Masdar may be coming back to life following a two year hibernation. Is this a bona fide resurrection of a visionary joint venture or just a soundbite to broadcast the commercial ambitions of Masdar? As part of a long-term strategy to advance alternative energy, Masdar had sought […]

The post Masdar Wind Project May Blow Back Into Egypt appeared first on Green Prophet.

The UK Green Investment Bank and the United Arab Emirates Masdar have inked a new agreement that will see the UAE-based company work toward new investment opportunities in the United Kingdom, taking their expertise in renewable energy to Britain. According to a statement issued by the UK Green Investment Bank, Masdar and the bank will […]

The post Green Investment Bank and Masdar Ink Agreement to Link Mideast to Britain appeared first on Green Prophet.

Not a head turner but Mitsubishi’s new “buggy” MIEV all electric car is one of the best EV car deals The year 2012 has been a mixed year as far as the success of various models of electric cars and hybrid cars go. Regarding the Middle East, where the luxury Fisker Karma electric vehicle hit […]

The post Happy 2013! A Good Year for Electric Cars appeared first on Green Prophet.

Kick off the new year with Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week to be held January 13 through 17. The world’s leading symposium committed to promoting the advancement of alternative energy and efficient, clean technologies, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2013 is expected to attract 30,000 participants from over 150 countries. Hosted by Masdar, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week provides a […]

The post Welcome 2013 at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week appeared first on Green Prophet.

Inside a Better Place battery switching station. Maurice interviews two Better Place electric car buyers who defend their decision to buy electric, and support the company which is flailing financially. Better Place international CEO Shai Agassi has been fired from the company he founded ; and in the wake of his departure, the company may also […]

The post We Interview Better Place Car Owners in Israel appeared first on Green Prophet.

It is estimated that BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster spilled 205 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  Local fishermen and other cleanup workers suffered from the toxic oil and carcinogenic dispersants, but at best only 3% of this oil was ever recovered.  The absorbent booms were never designed for open water.  When Cesar […]

The post Protei Designs Sailing Robots to Clean the Sea appeared first on Green Prophet.

We interview Izhar Gafni, the inventor of the cardboard bike. Izhar Gafni, inventor of innovative cardboard bike plans to keep production local, he tells Green Prophet: “I’m not interested in selling to some huge concern that will slap a “Made in China” label on the bike,” he says. “I’d like production to take place in local […]

The post Interview with Izhar Gafni, Inventor of the Greenest Cardboard Bike appeared first on Green Prophet.

An Israeli is part of a team to invent a new kind of “green” LED light called the OLED. If brought from theory to practice they could be manufactured from plastics and made by ink jets. Valy Vardeny and Tho D. Nguyen from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) worked with Eitan Ehrenfreund from Technion-Israel […]

The post New Green OLED Lights Could be Printed on Plastic appeared first on Green Prophet.

Japan is seeking Israeli clean tech experts to help rebuild Fukushima, which was devastated by both an earthquake and a tsunami last year. The Japanese company in charge of rehabilitation recently sent a delegation to Israel looking for experts and entrepreneurs, especially in the fields of water management and recycling. According to the company’s liaison […]

The post Japan Wants Israel Clean Tech Experts to Rebuild Fukushima appeared first on Green Prophet.

ACWA rumored to win the contract to build a 160 MW CSP project in in the south of Morocco.

The post Morocco solar energy deals led by Saudi Arabia appeared first on Green Prophet.

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the Masdar CEO, is the recipient of this year’s United Nations’ Champions of the Earth award. The award honours individuals whose actions and leadership have had a far-reaching positive impact on the environment, in advancing clean energy technologies to mitigate the threats of climate change. Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted renewable energy […]

The post Visionary Masdar CEO Named “Champion of the Earth” by UN appeared first on Green Prophet.

Saudi Arabia will save an estimated 690,000 barrels of oil a day by investing in renewables. Wonder just why Saudi Arabia finally got serious about solar with a $109 billion plan to solar-power a third of the Kingdom? I did. After all, for a long time, while its greener neighbors have been adding thousands of […]

The post Why Did the Saudis Just Go Big in Solar? Oil Prices. appeared first on Green Prophet.

The World Wildlife Fund and the Cleantech Group recently published a report saying that Israel is the second best place in the world to develop green technologies, second only to Denmark. Israel has long been a major exporter of such innovations, a leading developer of water-saving technology, such as its agricultural inventions, and solar power. Now Israel is starting to […]

The post Israel Invests in Domestic Solar Power appeared first on Green Prophet.

When BrightSource withdrew its IPO this month, the death knell for solar was sounded, as always. The truth is more mundane. According to the always inquisitive Katie Fehrenbacher  over at GigaOm who managed to snag a Q&A with the company, BrightSource just doesn’t necessarily need the extra money right now. Its Ivanpah solar thermal project is already fully funded […]

The post Why BrightSource Did not Need that IPO appeared first on Green Prophet.

Are android sex workers the future of tourism or an absurd use of clean technology? People will soon be having sex with robots as the latest in sex tourism, suggests a recent news report.  This novel twist on ‘clean technology’ (the inventors point out that the androids will be made of bacteria-resistant fibers) is enough […]

The post Robot Sex the CleanTech Future of Tourism? appeared first on Green Prophet.

450 million toothbrushes wind up in landfills every year in the US alone, says sustainable-products company World Centric. The utmost natural and biodegradable toothbrush is a twig from the Miswak shrub and about which we’ve reported. New York-based Lebanese designer Leen Sadder has even tried to make miswak twigs available commercially (read about it here). […]

The post World Centric’s Compostable Toothbrush Bites Into Dental Product Waste appeared first on Green Prophet.

It has no uranium, but lots of solar – yet Saudi Arabia plans to double down on nuclear capacity. As we covered previously, working with China, Saudi Arabia will spend more than $100 billion to build 16 nuclear energy plants within the next few years, as part of ramping up its electric capacity. But the […]

The post Solar-Rich Saudis Running after Nukes appeared first on Green Prophet.

Dubai’s electric utilities are considering buying back power generated from solar panels on the roofs of houses and office buildings. Last year, the city carried out its first ever study to see how much solar power is being produced outside the grid and it found that local businesses and other private owners were producing around 5 […]

The post Dubai Might Buy Solar off Roofs appeared first on Green Prophet.

South Africa, among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases worldwide, plans to introduce its own price on carbon next year. The Treasury said this week that South Africa, which is the continent’s biggest polluter, plans to introduce a carbon tax on annual emissions for all the industrial sectors responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, including electricity, […]

The post South Africa to Green its Economy in 2013 with Carbon Tax appeared first on Green Prophet.

Why does Israel so lag Arab neighbors like Morocco and Egypt in its renewable energy production?

I do not understand how the nation that invented CSP solar thermal - the solar energy that now powers much of the worlds gigantic utility-scale solar plants - can be just now announcing some tiny 35 MW solar project as its "largest ever!" - and Spain's Solaer group that is supposedly to build it; doesn't even have a website - when Morocco is building its first 500 MW plant with international energy giant Siemens.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? I have never lived in the Middle East region, unlike the rest of the local bloggers here at GreenProphet - perhaps I'm missing something that is rather obvious to the rest of you.

In the US, only our fossil states are as backward in renewable energy development.

The post Has Israel Become a Petrostate? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Sweden’s Hexicon to supply Malta with 10% of its electricity with a platform-mounting floating wind farm Despite the fact that the EU is willing to fund renewable energy in its climate laggard states, using cap & trade revenues from the sale of emission allowances, Malta still gets only 1% of its electricity from renewable energy. […]

The post Malta to Get State-of-the-Art Floating Wind Farm from Hexicon appeared first on Green Prophet.

The German renewable energy giant Siemens Energy has just secured its first wind turbine orders within Africa, with orders for two new wind farms going up in Morocco. Siemens will supply turbines with a total capacity of 100 MW, 50 MW to the Haouma Wind Farm project in Northern Morocco, and 50 MW to Foum El Oued […]

The post Siemens Sells First 100 MW of Turbines to Morocco appeared first on Green Prophet.

The funding for many of the great renewable energy projects within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and other developing regions, will continue to be directed via the World Bank, Reuters reports. The funds support projects which cut climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions in developing nations under the EU’s cap & trade law, and is […]

The post World Bank to Fill in till Global Climate Deal? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Frank Wouters of Masdar Power at Abu Dhabi’s World Future Energy Summit. With its first large scale solar farm expected to be operational by August, Masdar is now about to construct its second utility-scale solar project in the UAE, the 100 MW Nour 1. The first, Shams 1, used concentrated solar-thermal power (CSP) technology, that drives a steam turbine […]

The post China’s Suntech is Among Masdar’s Solar Bids for Nour 1 appeared first on Green Prophet.

Torresol - a joint venture between Spain's SENER and Abu Dhabi's Masdar, plans to invest up to $5 billion building 6 GW of concentrated solar-thermal power (CSP) projects over the next three years in the deserts of the MENA region, Spain, and the US. Although the sites are not yet named, at least one of the plants will be in Abu Dhabi.

The company ('torre' is Spanish for tower, and 'sol' for sun) says it is optimistic in getting the funding for its ambitious solar project pipeline. “Despite the ongoing economic troubles facing much of the world", says Torresol President Enrique Sendagorta, "we believe we can achieve our goals as foreign banks are becoming more interested in financing solar power projects because it is a winning investment”.

The first of the Desertec solar projects all use CSP, in Morocco, and in Algeria, and just today - in Tunisia.

The post Abu Dhabi’s Torresol $5 Billion Solar Plans Include US appeared first on Green Prophet.

Wow, the Desertec vision is barreling into realization! A clean energy future where the world's deserts supply huge amounts of solar energy to the whole of humankind is truly becoming reality. Now the fourth Desertec project, by far the largest-ever solar plant in the world - for 2,000 MW of solar power - is to be built in Tunisia.

(Previous stories: Desertec Begins: 500 MW Moroccan Solar in 2012, then MedGrid joined up, providing the transmission needed, with the plan to export up to 5GW of renewable power by cable under the Mediterranean between North Africa and Europe as early as 2020, and then most recently, the 3rd Desertec Deal Signed – Algerian Solar.)

How huge will this solar project be? 2, 000 MW is six times the size of the largest solar CSP project ever built

The post Tunisia Announces 4th Desertec Deal and 2 GW of Solar! appeared first on Green Prophet.

Abu Dhabi’s 75% government-owned National Energy Company TAQA has just created its first-ever division to specialize in investing in renewable energy. The new unit, Energy Solutions, will invest in wind, solar, thermal and hydro power, according to a report at The National.  TAQA first evidenced an interest in clean energy in 2008, and it has committed to a $1.1 billion […]

The post Abu Dhabi’s $32 billion TAQA Adds Clean Energy Division appeared first on Green Prophet.

Nearly 3 billion people lack safe and efficient cooking gear. It’s time to make the problem in the kitchen sexier. Half the world’s households prepare their meals over open fires or with jerry-rigged cookers fueled by scrap wood, coal, combustible waste and dung. Fatal burns are common and foraged fuel dangerously degrades indoor air quality. […]

The post Cleaner Cookstoves for a Cooler Planet appeared first on Green Prophet.

Algiers will be the place to be for utility-scale solar developers next May. The German trade fair specialists Messe and their Algerian daughter company in Algiers will hold a solar trade fair at the Palais des Expositions d'Alger from 7 to 10 May, 2012.

As one of three North African desert nations now at the forefront of responsible climate legislation, through its ambitious solar plans and its participation in the visionary Desertec project, Algeria is ideally situated to host the event.

The post Desertec Nation Algeria to Host Huge Solar Trade Fair from Germany appeared first on Green Prophet.

Morocco already has the world's most ambitious solar target. Now it is starting on wind.

Morocco's ascendance in renewable development is continuing apace. Morocco's state-run power utility has just invited companies to bid on five wind farm projects with a total power generation capacity of 850 megawatts, as part of its plan to build 2,000 MW of wind power by 2020.

The post Now Morocco is Looking for Bids for 850 MW of Wind appeared first on Green Prophet.

Scotland’s first Minister Alex Salmond will travel to Abu Dhabi this week  to address an audience of world leaders at the  World Future Energy Summit as a guest of Masdar. (Related: Global Clean Energy Brokers Meet at Abu Dhabi Emergy Summit) But additionally, in a first-ever contract with a country, the clean tech giant Masdar is about […]

The post Scotland Lands First Renewable Deal Between Masdar and a Nation appeared first on Green Prophet.

Post-Durban World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi is now a huge opportunity for clean energy developers in the Middle East region. Ever since the European Union adopted the Kyoto Accord and with it the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which funds renewable development in the developing world to offset carbon emissions in Europe, the developing […]

The post Global Clean Energy Brokers Meet at Abu Dhabi Emergy Summit This Month appeared first on Green Prophet.

GE Energy demonstrates its Jenbacher gas engine at the Gas Arabia Summit 2011 in Oman today. The extent of the global problem of gas flaring can be seen in this satellite photo of North America, that is quite bewildering at first sight. On the right we see the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul Minnesota, […]

The post GE Energy Shows MENA Region How to Reduce Gas Flaring appeared first on Green Prophet.

A way to bypass a minority of ignorant US voters on international climate policy? The climate talks at Durban look like they may finally yield some positive movement on a  Green Climate Fund, that would work the same way as the Clean Development Mechanism that has been so successful in growing renewable energy in the […]

The post Durban May Agree on Green Climate Fund, Overriding US Republicans appeared first on Green Prophet.

At a time when banks could hardly be more unpopular, one of America’s most despised has just saved the biggest solar rooftop project in US history. It is not just the Occupy Wall St protesters who are angry at the behavior of banks. At the Durban Climate Talks this week, NGOs attending the Durban Climate […]

The post World’s Worst Coal-Funding Bank Just Saved the Biggest US Rooftop Solar Project Ever appeared first on Green Prophet.

Another world’s first for the Israeli-born solar power giant that pioneered solar thermal. BrightSource Energy announced this week that they could chop down the size of their giant 750 MW project in California by 200 MW and yet still make the same 4,000 gigawatt-hours a year of power they are contractually required to produce for California, by […]

The post BrightSource Offers World’s Biggest Solar Storage Deal appeared first on Green Prophet.

CDM funding for renewable energy in emerging nations is endangered in Durban, South Africa With the increasingly likely non-renewal of the Kyoto Accord after 2012 at this week’s international climate talks at the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa, renewable energy project funding throughout […]

The post Possible End of Kyoto at Durban Threatens MENA Renewable Energy appeared first on Green Prophet.

In a marriage made in renewable energy heaven, the two most ambitious energy plans in the world have joined forces. Today, Desertec and Medgrid signed an agreement to strengthen co-operation on building renewable energy from the deserts and the huge grid to move the power. Desertec, which a mere few years ago was just an impractical […]

The post Huge MedGrid Joins Giant Solar Desertec Plan appeared first on Green Prophet.

Israel Corporation subsidiary Inkia Energy has signed an engineering procurement contract for the construction of a huge 510 MW hydro-electric project in Peru. Its Cerro del Águila Hydroelectric Power Plant will be located in the province of Tayacaja.

Peru is a country that already gets 48% of its electricity from hydropower, which depends on water at elevation for its operation. Peru's Energy and Mines Ministry, Pedro Sanchez said in a press release that the project is one of three hydroelectric plants it was seeking tenders for building and operating, that will require a combined investment of $1.7 billion.

The post Israel Corporation Subsidiary to Build 510 MW Hydro Project in Peru appeared first on Green Prophet.

Ocean bricks are underwater infrastructure for wind turbines and more futuristic ideas. Here’s a business that might do really well in the future. Israeli inventors Yoram Alkon and Dr. Eli Kent have come up with a giant “ocean brick” concept that would have many uses in the strange new world that we are inadvertently creating – […]

The post Ocean Bricks Create More Land for a Climate-Changed World appeared first on Green Prophet.