If we want to create progress in the Middle East in green building, architects, planners and investors need to move away from trendy ideas to going back to relationships with local traditions and cultures.
As an intern at Masdar Institute, I’ve witnessed firsthand how real and possible a drastically improved world is. Masdar serves as a real-life experiment of how our sustainable future might look like. Solar energy generated by a 10-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant as well as panels mounted on the institute’s buildings provide nearly all of the […]
Luca Curci architects studio presents Desert City, a project proposal for a sustainable way to live in the desert. It surely beats the maze of crazy unsustainable cities we see in regions in the United Arab Emirates, save for Masdar the zero energy city outside Abu Dhabi. The architects say that their theoretical project was born from […]
Want to make a splash with your water tech idea, vie for a chance to get funded and earn customers right away? In an X-factor style, water innovators are being called on to submit their company ideas for a competition being held at the International Water Summit (IWS) during the now famous Abu Dhabi Sustainability […]
Last year, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg became the first pilots to fly across America in a featherweight plane fueled only by the sun. The Swiss duo now plans to circumnavigate the world in a next-generation solar aircraft named the Solar Impulse 2. The March 2015 flight will start and finish in Abu Dhabi.
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.
Masdar CEO Sultan Al Jaber is moving on to “greener” pastures, according to a statement released by Abu Dhabi investment giant Mubadala. The firm has appointed Al Jaber as its chairman; Masdar’s new CEO has been identified as Ahmad Belhoul.
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.
When the Middle East eco-city developers from Masdar approached David Ardill, Partner and Design Director at Sheppard Robson, to design Siemens’ new corporate headquarters at Masdar City, the architect said it was the most challenging brief he had ever encountered. Green Prophet visited the building this week for an exclusive tour.
This is the second year that Masdar has hosted Green Prophet at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES). Last year we visited Shams I, the world’s largest CSP plant, more state-of-the art green buildings at Masdar City, and we saw an Estidama green villa prototype.
Jordan is pushing ahead with the largest commercial scale wind farm in the Middle East region, the Tafila Wind Farm, seemingly without care for the massive bird migration population that passes through Jordan twice a year. Green Prophet called Israel’s Bird King, bird migration specialist Prof. Yossi Leshem.
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?
The London Array is Masdar’s largest renewable energy project to date, but the government-supported research and development group have no intention of stopping there. With a 20 percent stake in the offshore wind project that will generate enough energy to power half a million UK homes, the group is ready to keep up the momentum.
The Middle East’s leading clean energy developer, Masdar has launched the very first renewable energy plant to be built in The Seychelles – the 6MW Port Victoria Wind Farm.
Online retailer Amazon grabbed headlines with their plan to build a biosphere inside transparent glass orbs which will house its Seattle – based workforce and a forest of plants. Interiors will feature “botanical zones” modeled on earth’s mountain ecologies.
The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) in Abu Dhabi, which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has purchased a Fujifilm Dimatix DMP283 inkjet printer – the learning institute’s first step towards printing its very own solar cells!
Abu Dhabi has been a leader in harnessing the power of the sun, clean technology and alternative sources of energy in the past few years. A new report form the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) has shown that efforts are progressing quite positively for the Arab Gulf country.
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.
Working in Qatar has clearly given the academic Mari Luomi access to lots of information about the climate change rhetoric and reality of the Gulf. It also puts her in a rather awkward position in terms of being able to voice her criticism. After interviewing Luomi for Green Prophet around a year ago, however, I […]
HH General Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi (left), HH Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Security Advisor for the UAE and Vice Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council visit Masdar City’s 10 MW PV plant in 2011. Proponents of environmental reform (renewable energy, greener economy) are racing […]
Situated even deeper in the desert than Morocco and prone to locust swarms, Mauritania’s topography consists of the “mostly barren, flat plains of the Sahara” – as the CIA puts it. They’ve got very little water and less than half of one percent of the country’s land is arable. But they’ve got sun and they’ve […]
About half of Abu Dhabi’s trash will ‘burn’ into green electricity in new $850 million power plant. Maybe you saw the wonderful movie, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Or maybe you’d read stories on Green Prophet about Masdar, or Shams, the world’s largest CSP plant in Abu Dhabi. Arab nations and their economies are certainly […]
We’ve been hearing about Dubai’s version of Masdar City since 2011, but skeptics have doubted that “Sustainable City” would ever become more than a mirage in the desert. Not anymore, according to local news reports. Diamond Developers has announced plans to officially launch their latest project – a 120 acre green city – at the […]
If Shell were to design a clever infographic with a bunch of facts, it would probably highlight the amount of fossil fuels the United States imports from “dangerous” foreign countries, how expensive those imports are, and how the company could save the world if only they had unrestricted access to the Arctic’s fossil fuel reserves […]
By appointing the Chief Executive Officer of the country’s leading renewable energy initiative as Minister of State, the oil and gas rich United Arab Emirates sends a very clear message to its own people and the world that they are serious about cleaning up their overall energy portfolio. Last week the UAE rearranged its cabinet, […]
