Perhaps we shouldn’t begrudge the Arab World’s first serious reality TV show, particularly since Stars of Science was designed to encourage more youth in the region to pursue science and technology. But it’s hard to turn a blind eye to some of the inventions coming from this show when the Qatari government is spending tens of millions of dollars to produce it.

Like Abu Dhabi, where Masdar City – the Middle East’s most ambitious study in sustainable development – was born, oil-rich Qatar is building a lagging knowledge base for the day that oil runs out, but that’s where their similarities end. While Abu Dhabi has been voted the “greenest” of Gulf countries, Qatar’s western-ish televised competition has yet to produce genuinely sustainable innovations. One woman, 15 men

Out of 7,000 applicants, only 16 budding scientists in the Arab World were selected to compete in Stars of Science. One of them was Sereen Sharairi, a Jordanian biomedical engineer and the only female contestant, and the rest were men from Egypt, Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Tunisia and elsewhere.

Of the sixteen, only five contestants were chosen to present their business plans to fierce judges – modeled after American Idol’s sometimes sarcastic and soul-destroying Simon Cowell – after each product’s engineering and technical viability had been established.

Their ideas are genuinely groundbreaking for a region that has long neglected its former scientific glories, and at least one invention had a humanitarian component to it, but mostly they reveal a disturbing absence of any kind of green vision.

Where’s the green vision?

Mohammed Al-Chaari from Tunisia devised a wireless charging device that would provide battery juice to inefficient robots that inspect pipelines. He told Wired that when the show was done, he hoped to move into the nuclear industry instead.

Bilal Al-Dukhan from Syria, the first of the five final contestants to be pushed off the show because of an unrealistic business plan, designed a mold that would produce cement blocks in one day instead of six. Although this improved efficiency would have led to a reduction in energy consumption, it would also have spurred rapid manufacture of one of the most unsustainable building materials on earth.

Mohammed Al-Rifal from Kuwait designed an ironing robot. While the region’s women might have appreciated a reduction in their work load, his invention seems to us like an unnecessary gimmick in a world so full of junk it’s actually floating in space.

Ziad Sankair from Lebanon put people at the forefront of his vision by coming up with a wearable heart monitor that can predict if a person is going to have a heart attack with a realtime EKG monitoring device. He was also one of the few contestants to have a clever, realistic business plan that stumped the jury’s criticisms.

And the winner is…

Although the winning design by Haytham Dsouki from Egypt is clever and what Wired called “neatly packaged,” it definitely wasn’t designed with sustainability in mind. Instead, the touch-sensitive plastic stickers embedded with tiny circuits turn any surface into a digital interface – a la iPhones, iPads, etc.

Dsouki envisions that all of Egypt’s future public bathrooms will be equipped with these tiny interfaces. Conceptually, it would be easy to use this technology to control water consumption but mostly – as Wired explains it – “this Arab, a kid from a working-class Cairo neighborhood, had come up with an invention that wouldn’t feel out of place in an Apple store.”

And for it, he received $300,000 in prize money.

The 2011 show is done, but we hope that with Qatar’s controversial 2022 solar-powered World Cup on the horizon, not to mention growing signs that unsustainable human behavior is killing the planet, the 2012 contestants will put on their green caps.

:: We learned about Stars of Science from a full-length Wired feature that is absolutely worth reading.

All images via Stars of Science

More on Science and Technology in the Arab World:

7 Amazing Clean Tech Projects From the Arab World

Sharjah Students Make Renewable Energy From Noise

Masdar and Siemens Team up to Develop Sand-Resistant Solar Panels

The post Exciting “Stars of Science” Reality TV Show Completely Lacks Green Vision appeared first on Green Prophet.

We applaud any individual or organization that seeks to green up their portfolio, and Saudi Arabia is no exception. Really, it’s difficult to blame the Kingdom’s residents for striking it rich with oil, expanding their quality of life, and not wanting to let it go even as the world gets hotter and ecosystems collapse. But sustainable Saudi architecture exists in a class of its own.

We have on one end simple earth architecture such as Hassan Fathy’s famous works in Egypt, which requires very little imported materials and have virtually no environmental impact, and then we have the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) designed by Henning Larsen Architects (HLA). Even though all kinds of alternative energy and passive design techniques have been incorporated into its design, this 3,300,000 sq m mixed use center is audacious, expensive, and about as glitzy as it gets.

HLA is a well-respected firm, and are particularly well-known for greening contemporary urban architecture, so the KAFD design is definitely worth celebrating. Although the renders depict buildings with stereotypical Arab fanfare, there are several features that make this district less obnoxious than other developments in the region.

Water features will bring temperatures down by up to 8 degrees Celsius and shading to will mitigate excess solar gain such that very little mechanical cooling will have to be used.

The various retail, financial, residential, and cultural facilities will have green roofs that provide insulation and smart lighting solutions that will further ensure that energy use is kept to a minimum.

KAFD will be a pedestrian-friendly center in Riyadh with a monorail and solar-powered skywalk bridges. If the Saudis can be convinced to leave their cars at home, these will keep vehicular pollution down.

Facades will include building integrated solar cells and the cladding material will be sourced locally — according to World Architecture News — so that the project’s carbon footprint will be less onerous.

All in all, energy consumption (when compared to similar developments in the country) will be halved – an impressive feat.

Nonetheless, a major driver of climate change and resource depletion is this sense of entitlement – the notion that the few should be allowed to use up more than their fair share of natural resources while the rest of the world scrambles for the scraps. Eventually, even Saudi will have to scale back to something much more modest.

:: WAN

The post Sustainable Architecture Saudi Style: King Abdullah Financial District appeared first on Green Prophet.

Last year we posted a funky little video that detailed what goes into making just one cell phone. “Eric-Sun” – a personified cellular phone facing the end of its life – is comprised in part of  South African gold and Russian platinum, of silver from Mexico, and nickel from Australia, and so many other components it would take all day to list them. Eventually, this and the other 99% of the world’s cell phones are tossed in a landfill when the next iPhone comes out.

This eye-opening video raised a lot of questions about how feasibly we can continue on our so called developmental path full of fancy gadgets and cloud-hugging towers when we live on a planet of finite resources. But convincing people to think about this is tricky – until you see a nifty infographic like the one put together by American designer Camden Asay and posted on FastCo Design. Finally, thanks to one succint (but no doubt fallible) chart, we have a pretty good idea of just how quickly we are depleting … a lot.

FastCo warns that although Asay derived his data from reputable sources such as the U.S. Geological Survey, this chart might be a little bit too easy to grasp since it’s difficult to predict how our rate of consumption will compare to our increasing ability to do more with less. The site’s founder Cliff Kuang cites Jevons Paradox, which describes how (paradoxically) increased efficiency also increases our rate of consumption. Jevons Paradox + Rapid Population Growth = something worth sitting down for in order to properly digest it.

So think twice before you throw out your e-waste and other “junk,” which Egyptian fixers put to good use; one day it could be worth its weight in gold.

The post Peak Everything? Save Your Junk. appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s that time of year again, when delegations suit up for the circus that has come to typify the United Nations Climate Change Conferences. Rich, polluting countries unwilling to sacrifice their high-flying lifestyles are threatening to abandon the Kyoto Protocol, which in part jeopardizes the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that helps MENA countries advance renewable energy projects such as Morocco’s 500 MW solar plant expected to break ground next year.

At present there are 388.92 parts per million of CO2 in our atmosphere. The safe level is 350 ppm. The object of these expensive, carbon intensive meetings is to reach some kind of international agreement that requires everyone to reduce their carbon emissions, but they almost always fail because of self interest. For a perfect example of this, look at Saudi Arabia: despite showing the highest GDP growth in 8 years, one of the world’s most extravagant nations is protecting itself against new policies that might put their oil-wealth at risk.

OPEC’s Cheerleader 

According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia is arguing on behalf of all Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which Mohammed al-Sabban said in a speech at the Energy Dialogue conference in Riyadh is unfairly targeted by climate change mitigation policies.

Senior economic adviser to the Minister of Petroleum, al-Sabban said:

Saudi Arabia hasn’t asked for compensation for the loss of income from oil sales as consumers look to obtain energy from cleaner fuels such as natural gas or renewable energy… Rather the kingdom wants technological assistance from developed countries and more direct investment to diversify its economy.

Of the 12 OPEC nations, which Bloomberg notes collectively sell 40% of the world’s crude oil, 4 are among the top 50 richest nations in the world. Those include Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and of course Saudi Arabia. Other OPEC countries in the region that are less well-off include Iran, Iraq, Algeria and Libya.

Kyoto II?

These countries are also among the most vulnerable to climate change, since each one of them is already struggling with scarce water resources and are subject to drought and record high temperatures. Saudi’s call for investment in diversification is a smart move, however, and kudos to the kingdom for taking a stand against waffling polluters.

Saudi Arabia thinks that a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol is a must, and without having unconditional emission reduction numbers from developed countries for the period beyond 2012, it will be impossible to have any agreement in Durban.

Saudi’s Solar Society

Despite being oil producers, Saudi Arabia and the UAE recognize that peak oil is near (and the world will be affected as soon as next year), and are leading the MENA region’s transition to a solar society. Just yesterday we covered a “game-changing” postage stamp-sized solar cell technology being developed in Canada, which received a $10 million capital infusion from Saudi.

It remains to be seen if Canada, China, the United States, and India are going to catch on to the seriousness of climate change during the next two weeks in Durban, but stay tuned for updates.

:: Bloomberg

image via Wallyir

The post Saudi Acts as Oil Cheerleader at COP 17 Circus appeared first on Green Prophet.

While most experts say it is hard to know what is really going on with Saudi oil supplies, “What we do know is that, for whatever reason, Saudi Arabia produced 600,000 fewer barrels each day in 2010 than it did in 2005, and with growing Saudi consumption of their own oil, the drop in exports from Saudi Arabia has been even more dramatic.”

That is the opinion of UC San Diego economist James Hamilton who brings a fresh perspective to peak oil.

We who write about clean tech see it in the inexplicable Saudi moves towards solar power – Saudi Arabia to Replace Oil with Sun Power for Desalination Plants, It Must be Peak Oil Driving Saudis to Solar, Could Saudi Arabia Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar? – and The Oil Drum has written frequently about the evidence for peak oil.

But Hamilton considers peak oil from an economic perspective in his paper Oil Prices, Exhaustible Resources, and Economic Growth. His findings suggest that the peak in oil production may be much closer than we think.

Until recently, he says, Saudi Arabia has often made a deliberate decision  to alter its own production in an effort to mitigate price increases and decreases. That that behavior has now slowed is a sign that it is no longer able to increase production enough to export and supply its own rapidly rising demand internally. For example, the kingdom cut production to try to hold up prices during the weak oil market 1981-85 and recession of 2001, and boosted production during the two Persian Gulf wars, to make up for output lost from other producing countries.

Its huge Ghawar field has produced prodigious amounts of oil since 1951, and in recent years had accounted for perhaps 6% of total world production all by itself. Athough this is difficult to confirm, many experts believe that Ghawar has peaked and is declining already.

Total production from OPEC has essentially been flat since 2005, mostly due to the decline in Saudi production. Although China, Brazil, Africa and Canada have increased production (and Canada’s is coming from oil sands; the dregs) it is difficult to see these ever accounting for a major fraction of total world oil production.

The bottom line is that even with more production from other parts of the world to make up the Saudi losses, global production of oil from all sources was essentially flat from 2005 to 2010.

Image: MSFS in Arabia

Related stories:

Saudi Arabia to Replace Oil with Sun Power for Desalination Plants
It Must be Peak Oil Driving Saudis to Solar
Could Saudi Arabia Become the Saudi Arabia of Solar?

The post Saudi Peak Oil Could Affect World in 2012 appeared first on Green Prophet.

A senior economist at HSBC claimed in a recent report that the world’s oil resources are only expected to last five more decades, according to the New York Times. An earlier report from Wikileaks that Saudi Arabia’s peak oil is expected to happen much sooner than thought and desperate measures by mega oil companies corroborate this notion. In the meantime, we can expect a series of “persistent and painful” price hikes in the coming decades.“We’re confident that there are around 50 years of oil left,” Karen Ward, the British bank’s senior global economist, said in an interview on CNBC.

Rising population, particularly in China, are putting huge stresses on oil production. By 2050, HSBC estimates that an additional one billion vehicles on the roads will eat up oil reserves.

Substitutes such as bio-fuels and (heaven forbid) synthetic oils derived from coals might be able to alleviate strain, but will only become viable once oil prices top $150 a barrel.

HSBC believes that the last few decades of oil will have a tremendous impact on economic power, and that power will shift to more oil-wealthy nations. Europe, for example, is not expected to fare well.

Meanwhile, as supplies dwindle, the oil industry is pressing forward with increasingly ruinous projects such as the Canadian tar sands, arctic drilling, dangerous off-shore projects the likes of which led to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster last year, and oil shale drilling.

Referencing the end of oil and our ability to bounce back with renewables, Richard Heinberg from the Post Carbon Institute said at a recent speech to Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduates, “in my darker moments I fear that we have already waited too long and that it is already too late.”

He also said, and we agree, that he hopes that is not the case.

:: New York Times

More on oil in the Middle East:

Interview with American Oil Shale Expert Jeremy Boak

Saudi Arabia to Replace Oil with Sun Power

How Saudi Arabia Plans to Win the Food War

image via XcBiker

The post Oil Will Be A Past Relic When Today’s Babies Hit Fifty appeared first on Green Prophet.

As the largest exporter of crude oil, Saudi Arabia has kept international oil prices reasonably steady. Until now. The recent instability in the region coupled with overambitious estimates and slowing production has cast serious doubt on the country’s ability to keep prices low. Even more troubling, The Guardian reports that recently leaked confidential cables show that peak oil could occur as early as 2012. Peak oil’s inevitability has long been known, but it was earlier thought that we had until 2020.

The United States Consul met with Sadad al-Hussein, a Geologist and former head of exploration at Aramco, the Saudi Oil Company responsible for so much of the world’s crude oil supply. Mr. al-Hussein disputes claims by Mr. Abdallah al-Saif, the current Aramco Senior Vice President, that the company will be able to produce 900 billion barrels of oil within the next twenty years.

According to one of a series of cables exchanged between the American Embassy in Riyadh and Washington, this number represents a 300 billion barrel or 40% overestimation. In one cable, the consul sums up Mr. al-Hussein’s reasoning:

“According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is twofold. First, it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described, and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco and energy optimists would like to portray.”

Mr. al-Husseini believes that output will plateau for the next fifteen years and that it will thereafter decline.

This is in keeping with an earlier projection made by the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s chief economist Faith Birol, who told the Guardian that oil production would peak in 2020.

Putting an additional strain on international supply, Saudi’s local economic and population growth is usurping oil otherwise slated for export. A cable dated October, 2009 demonstrates that Saudi will have to double its generation capacity to 68,000 MW by 2018 in order to sustain its own demand.

Other Gulf countries such as Abu Dhabi, are experiencing similar conundrums, though to a less disastrous degree. As a result, belated efforts are being made to develop alternative resources such as solar in order to lessen the local demand for oil. Some of Saudi’s desalination plants, for example, will be solar-powered.

China – a major importer of oil – has set its sights on hard-to-reach African oil to compensate for Saudi’s dwindling monopoly, but it is only a matter of time before global demand outstrips supply. And the experts are gravely concerned.

“We are asleep at the wheel here: choosing to ignore a threat to the global economy that is quite as bad as the credit crunch, quite possibly worse,” Jeremy Legget, head of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, told the Guardian.

:: The Guardian

More on Saudi Arabia and Oil:

Saudia Arabia To Replace Oil With Sun Power for Desalination Plants

Summer Heat Jams Oil Production In Oil-Rich Saudi Arabia

With Peak Oil Looming, Gulf States Consider Ending Fossil Fuel Subsidies

image via madaboutasia

The post WikiLeaks: Former Aramco Head Warns US About Saudi’s Strained Oil Production appeared first on Green Prophet.

With an area of less than 12,000 km2, Qatar bounced onto the world scene when FIFA announced its decision to award the 2022 World Cup to that country. Because it is exceptionally hot during the summer months, it’s possible and controversial that the festivities will be moved to cooler times. A newly awarded project is similarly bound to get some prickly attention: a cactus-shaped office building. While its Gulf neighbor pursues the tallest buildings, Qatar is aiming for design inspired by nature’s ability to withstand the desert climes.

Designed by Bangkok-based Aesthetics Architects GO Group, the giant cactus will be used as office space for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture’s (MMAA). Directly next to the building is a dome, which will house a botanical garden.

The building has been designed to be energy efficient – a necessary component in an area short on water and facing eventual peak oil – and to mimic, to some extent, a cacti’s “clever” adaptation techniques.

In order to avoid losing water to evaporation during the heat of the day, cacti transpiration occurs at night, long after the sun has set. While the building’s adaptations are somewhat different, it can gauge when its sun shades should be deployed to keep out the sun.

Biomimicry is a dynamic, emergent field in which architecture, design, biology and other sciences intersect to develop buildings, even whole cities, that “mimic” nature’s organic sustainability.

Indeed, in the way a field relies on floods for architecture, good biomimicry thrives on what might otherwise be thought of as adverse environments.

Another example of biomimicry is a water bottle designed after Namibian beetles that usurp the slightest drop of moisture in one of earth’s most inhabitable place. Read our interview with biomimicry expert Melissa Sterry to learn more.

In the meantime, take a peak at these designs: no sense of cost or implementation just yet, but stay tuned.

:: Inhabitat

More architectural news from the Middle East:

Ehrlich Architecture Trumps Hadid and Foster For UAE Parliament

Reclaiming Bahrain’s Coastal Architecture in Venice

Mud-Structures In The Middle East: Spectacular and Sustainable

The post Qatar Ministry To Get A Desert-Loving Cactus Building appeared first on Green Prophet.

Saudi Arabia officials meet for nanotech desalination investment

The development of nanotech membranes for use in desalination is one of the new ideas Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is considering to modernize the Kingdsom’s 80-year-old oil-powered desalination technology.

Two things need to be accomplished. As peak oil continues to deplete oil production now used to generate the electricity for desalination, the nation, now entirely dependent on seawater, must transition to the use of concentrated solar power to replace oil-powered desalination, or risk real water deprivation.

Nanotech membranes are to provide the second big change from the oil-powered desalination of the 20th century to the renewably powered desalination in the 21st.

Currently Saudi Arabia pumps desalinated water through 4,157 kilometers of pipelines and has 29 stations to pump water to 168 reservoirs with a capacity of up to 9.5 million cubic meters.

Desalination is becoming an increasingly larger budget item for the Kingdom. Although it has spent almost 95 billion Saudi Rials on desalination over the last 80 years, investment almost doubled this year from last year with a new 14 billion invested in 2010 alone, in opening the worlds largest desalination plant to date. However, it is potentially limited, due to its to oil-powered generation.

Last month Saudi Arabia announced plans for the Middle East’s first international centre for research and innovation in nanotechnology at the King Abdullah Institute at the King Saud University. The country has launched its first nanotech company for the manufacture of nano-membranes for use in  the petrochemicals and desalination industries.

Professors at the universities affected say that the recent nanotechnology research initiatives will help in producing a local scientific workforce, and keep pace with worldwide nanotechnology developments.

Currently the Kingdom is reliant on foreign research. But the need to keep pace with nanotech worldwide is crucial, and especially so in these two areas of national interest such as water and renewable energy.

Image: Syed Muneer

The post Saudi Arabia Investing in Nanotech for Desalination appeared first on Green Prophet.

But the kingdom has solar insolation that is the envy of the world. So the Governor of the state power company ECRA (Saudi Electricity and Cogeneration Regulatory Authority) is hoping to get state approval for incentives to help solar begin to power some of the kingdom’s 50,000 megawatt electricity needs, according to ArabNews.

Abdullah Al-Shehri of ECRA says that with renewable energy incentives to spur development, as much as 10% of the kingdom’s electricity could be supplied by solar energy and other renewable sources by 2020.

“I think any number can be achieved, provided there is enough support for it from studies, analysis,” he told the Reuters Middle East Summit in Riyadh. Earlier this month, the director of new business evaluation of state-owned Aramco suggested that the kingdom is capable of growing a solar industry. But it depends on how high oil prices go, triggering price signals.

As head of ECRA he sees a demand that is rising at 8% a year. The kingdom uses one tenth of its oil for its own electricity use. If he is successful in his mission, incentives like state funding and a Feed-in Tariff would start as soon as next year.

Considering that Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of oil, the kingdom pays an extraordinarily high price for this oil-based electricity. But when oil is $80 a barrel, it can’t be wasted at home. So state electricity there now costs the equivalent of paying 25 cents a kilowatt-hour, making its wholesale price higher than retail electricity costs in most places.

At least that is the estimate of Vahid Fotuhi, director of BP Solar for the Middle East.

At prices like that, plus an electricity demand that rises 8% a year – and a complete dependence on a dwindling oil supply – more solar companies like BP Solar should be eyeing the vast reaches of prime solar land in the desert.

Even my solar power off my own roof in California, with far less insolation than the Arabian desert, is only 12 cents a kilowatt-hour, and that’s at retail.

I’m thinking the sun in the Saudi Arabia of solar is going to be able to produce power for the Saudis for less than 25 cents a kilowatt-hour!

Image: Donna Corless

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