With a bounty of sun, the giant island nation and continent of Australia is landlocked. Like any island nation that is restricted from movement because of political or territorial disputes, nations like Australia, Switzerland or Israel learn that they need to be self-sufficient and fend for themselves. They create a local and sustainable food supply, […]
Adolescent men in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) are recruited by warlords because they are desperate. A new German fund will help keep farming in the family and guys like this in his father's arms. Bigger steps are needed from the top down: Investing in renewables is the answer.
German project developer juwi has installed their first combined wind and solar plant in Egypt to be used for desalinating and pumping irrigation water for farms and it is monitored and controlled remotely from Germany. Located halfway between the bustling cities of Cairo and Alexandria in Wadi El-Natrun, the new plant is comprised of four 12 […]
Even as some solar projects are just taking flight in Israel, underlining a new wave of optimism about the technology’s ability to succeed in the country, other solar giants are taking their leave of Israel. International energy and infrastructure giant, Siemens, announced last Monday that it was closing down its Siemens-Solel plant in Beit Shemesh, Israel. In […]
Yafa Energy could be a bridge over which Arab-Israeli technology finds its way to industries in the Arab world seeking renewable energy solutions. Eureka! Yafa Energy has become the first Arab-Israeli company to win a prestigious European Union EUREKA (Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration) grant. Awarded through Israel’s Prime Minister’s office, Yafa was named […]
Israeli solar thermal collectors made like honeycombs trap more heat from the sun to heat homes in cold countries like Germany. Israel is the land of milk and honey –– and solar hot water heaters. Practically every roof in Israel is fitted with a solar thermal collector to warm water for endless hot showers and […]
Was it the leap-second bug that pushed America’s power plants beyond their capacity? A 61 second minute was added to clocks around the world on June 30, 2012 at 23:59:60 UTC in order to compensate for slight variations in earth’s rotation speed. This triggered a number of software bugs one of which caused a spike […]
Last Wednesday in Munich, Germany, Israeli solar energy company TIGI Ltd. was among the three winners in the solar-thermal category at the Intersolar Europe Exhibition, an annual forum promoting solar technologies since 1991. Despite the fact that it is located in the Middle East, Israel is often included in Europe’s competitions and showcases, as with […]
Math helps us understand how people flow, and just maybe it could help Hajj pilgrims stay safe. A Californian jogs to the beach. Coming towards him on the sidewalk is a Texan. Unless one steps aside they’ll collide. Quick: which way does the jogger move? If this is in Europe or the USA, heavy odds he […]
Following violent protests in February, Cairo police stacked 10-feet-tall masonry walls around the Ministry of the Interior to cut access to that hated symbol of Egypt’s ousted regime. New barriers appeared after subsequent riots, turning nearby communities into a labyrinth of roadblocks and checkpoints. Recently, artists “removed” them, overpainting concrete with images of the streetscapes they blocked. In a few days, […]
German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex will construct eleven 2.5 MW turbines for the Tektuğ Elektrik Group’s first wind project. This autumn, on a mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey’s Adiyaman province, construction will begin on the 27.5 MW “Sincik” wind energy farm, Nordex announced today. It will be the flagship wind energy project of the Tektuğ Elektrik […]
Back in November we reported on a solar plant in Hebron that was threatened with demolition orders issued by the Israeli administration. However, diplomatic pressure from the Spanish government which paid for the project helped save the solar panels from destruction. It now appears that a further 6 solar and wind turbine projects in the […]
Complete kits are now available for installing home solar energy systems In today’s growing solar energy market including large area projects occurring in the USA and in the Middle East too much attention is being placed on constructing large solar array farms in the middle of the desert. One study made by Israel’s Nature and […]
Siemens CEO Peter Loscher on nuclear energy: “This chapter is closed for us” German industrial giant Siemens, already a leader in developing renewable energy projects and sustainable future residential communities has announced that it will phase out its participation in building equipment for nuclear power plants. The announcement was reported in Germany’s Der Spiegel, with […]
Meet billions of dollars in human capital and renewable energy finance at the EneR event in November. Morocco to invest 8 billion Euros in renewables over the next 8 years. Despite unrest in the Arab world, Morocco has remained a relatively stable environment socially and financially. As the first Arab country to make a serious […]
The three winners from the Middle East/MENA region are Tunisia, Bahrain and Qatar in new survey on tourism trends. The recently released 2011 “Travel and Tourism Competitiveness”report by the World Economic Forum, in co-operation with Booz & Company, reveals some interesting dynamics in the global tourism industry, including a shift to the East, with Central and […]
Far better than Kraft, Kochhaus sells recipes and meals with the right amount of ingredients. We recently profiled big brother technology conceived by Kraft and Intel that can read a customer’s face and spit out some horrific recipe idea that the customer will then blindly purchase. They are rewarded with a food sample. Now for […]
Help Greenpeace and jovoto bring renewable energy to Germany with awesome graphic design Are you a creative designer looking to use your aesthetic powers towards eco-friendly means? Greenpeace and jovoto’s joint design contest, Creativity for the Energy Revolution, is a good place to start. The competition attempts to use cool design to spread the message […]
The renewable energy investment company Rosebud Energy Deutschland is ready to invest $500 million in research in Israel for the production of algae-based bio jet fuel, the Israeli business newspaper Globes reported yesterday. John Antoniadis, the CEO of the German company, met last week in Israel with Minister of Environmental Protection Gilad Erdan and Minister […]
It’s getting really hot over here in the Middle East – at least when it comes to solar energy investing and buying. Siemens, reports Haaretz today, just bought Israel’s solar energy company Solel yesterday for a scorching hot price tag of $418 million USD. The news between Siemens and Solel was already bubbling back in July, […]
Being oil-poor may be more of a blessing than a curse for both Israel and Jordan. A joint Israeli-Jordanian project-based on the production of biofuel from agricultural waste-will take center stage at Israel’s Water Technologies and Environmental Control Exhibition, WATEC this November. Biofuels received a great deal of negative publicity last year after they were […]
German industrial giant Siemens is now involved in talks to purchase the Israeli Solel Solar Energy Ltd., according to an article published in Globes, Israel’s leading business paper. Solel, a global leader in building solar thermal fields, was partially invested in by a UK energy company, Ecofin about 18 months ago. But it now appears […]
Israeli NGOs, such as Earth’s Promise, are involved with helping Ethiopian populations within the country (check out the Eco-Thiopia festival in Beer Sheva next week). And the Israeli government, apparently, is involved with helping Ethiopian populations… in Ethiopia. On Wednesday the German Environment Ministry announced that Israel and Germany have launched a joint irrigation project […]
Do you ever get the feeling that every time you close your eyes, someone in Europe is doing something brilliant for the environment? Well, the residents of Vauban, Germany live in a suburb where most streets are off-limits to cars and the shops are mixed in with housing. The town’s 5,500 people are packed into […]
As African nations sell and lease its land, and birthright, to the world’s super-powers, and arguably “dangerous” countries like Saudi Arabia who support Islamic fundamentalism, we are seeing a brand new kind of neo-colonial land-grab, and it scares me. I’d reported on Galten’s Jatropha seeds for biofuel here, and also on the Israeli conglomerate Ormat, […]