Across Western countries and large parts of the Middle East, health systems are approaching a structural turning point.

Rising costs, chronic disease, demographic change, and environmental stress are exposing the limits of existing healthcare models.

What is becoming visible is not a crisis of medicine, but a crisis of system design.

Policymakers are increasingly recognizing that the future of health prevention and healthcare cannot be secured through medical expansion alone. Long-term stability will depend on how foundational systems—water, food, energy, and living environments—are designed and integrated.

In this article, I point out why health must be understood as the outcome of coherent system architectures. The question is no longer whether health systems will need to change, but whether they will be redesigned deliberately—or forced to change under pressure.

From System Loss to System Design – Why Health Begins Long Before Hospitals

In many countries, healthcare costs are rising faster than economic growth. At the same time, chronic disease is placing lasting pressure on public budgets. This situation is often described as a medical crisis. In reality, it is a structural one.

Health is not a medical sector.

It is the outcome of systems.

Modern health policy focuses primarily on hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and clinical care. These are necessary, but they intervene late—after imbalances have already emerged.

Health begins earlier: with water quality, food systems, living environments, and the ecological conditions of daily life. When these systems are unstable or poorly regulated, disease rates rise and healthcare systems enter a permanent repair mode.

This is not a failure of medicine.
It is a failure of system design.

Historically, this understanding of health was self-evident. Medical traditions across the Levant and the wider region viewed health as balance between human beings and their environment. Water, food, climate, and lifestyle were central medical factors. These systems were preventive and sustainable over time.

Today, it is becoming clear that intervention-based health systems—however effective in acute care—face economic limits. Even the countries that developed them struggle with rising costs and structural overload.

A different path is possible.

Where water systems are stable, nutrition improves. Where nutrition is stable, human physiology stabilizes. Where living environments support biological needs, long-term health costs decline. Health does not emerge as a service delivered, but as the result of good design.

This also changes how medicine itself is understood. Originally, the physician was a system thinker. In this sense, many professions shape health—from water and agricultural experts to urban planners and infrastructure operators.

This systemic relationship is illustrated in the accompanying graphic.

What Comes Next?

If health is a system outcome, reform cannot begin with isolated projects. It must take place at the level where systems are designed: states and ministries.

The next step lies in developing national health architectures that integrate water, food, living environments, and infrastructure as a coherent foundation. The goal is no longer intervention, but prevention—and long-term stability.

::Bonn Climate Project

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Heinz J. Sturm is a system architect and analyst working at the intersection of energy, water, health, and societal resilience. He is the initiator of the Bonn Climate Project, where he develops integrated system frameworks linking climate action with public health and long-term stability. Sturm is also the developer of Ars Medica Nova, a conceptual platform exploring new models of preventive health that draw on systems thinking, biology, and infrastructure design. His work focuses on translating complex system architectures into practical narratives for policymakers, researchers, and civil society.

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Following the breakdown of the Colombia-hosted COP16 summit in November, global leaders reconvened in Rome in late February for a fresh round of the U.N.’s annual biodiversity summit. While fraught negotiations have this time led to a last-minute deal, critics have already lamented that the agreement lacks the ambition needed to meaningfully tackle biodiversity challenges.

The previous COP16 gathering notably collapsed without a deal on nature restoration financing in developing countries, creating ongoing tensions between Global North and South governments. Deepening geopolitical disputes have since compounded the negotiations’ obstacles, with the new U.S. administration’s aversion to environmental multilateralism and sweeping foreign aid cuts underscoring the ongoing obstacles facing global cooperation.

In this climate, relying on government-led action to curb the global biodiversity crisis is no longer viable, making the private sector’s contribution increasingly vital. Moving forward, large companies from industries traditionally associated with biodiversity loss must now step up, with leading players in the mining, energy and maritime sectors already showing the way.

Political action outpaced by global crisis

Adopted at the COP15 conference in December 2022, the global goal of halting and reversing nature loss by 2030 is rapidly slipping out of reach, with political will failing to match the gravity of a deepening biodiversity crisis. Since 1970, global wildlife populations have plummeted by over 70% and one million species are now on the brink of extinction, while unsustainable agriculture, pollution and deforestation continue ravaging ecosystems at an alarming pace.

Although the fresh deal struck at COP16 has been embraced by certain leaders as a breakthrough for international cooperation, many others – particularly from the Global South – have expressed frustration at its lack of urgency and concrete action. Bolivia’s negotiator, Juan Carlos Alurralde Tejada, has notably decried the agreement’s failure to deliver real progress, warning that prolonged bureaucratic delays will only worsen the environmental collapse. The so-called solutions – such as agreeing to a global biodiversity fund in 2028 and establishing the voluntary Cali Fund without any financial pledges – reflect the international community’s “kick-the-can-down-the-road’ approach to biodiversity.

This insufficiently-ambitious agreement comes amid a broader backdrop of global challenges: trade disputes, shrinking foreign aid and rising political tensions. The absence of the U.S. at the summit – having refused to sign the UN Convention on Biological Diversity – further undermines hopes for meaningful action. The burden of biodiversity preservation thus continues to fall on the shoulders of the private sector, which must now fill the leadership void left by political inertia. As global leaders in their respective sectors, TotalEnergies, CMOC and CMA CGM are setting the stage for a new era of corporate responsibility in biodiversity conservation.

Private firms rising to the occasion

TotalEnergies, with its commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, integrates biodiversity into every stage of its operations. Notably, during the construction of the Shetland Islands gas plant in Scotland, the company invested $100 million to excavate and preserve peatlands – critical ecosystems for carbon sequestration and wildlife, ensuring these wetlands are restored to their original state over time.

Building on this momentum, TotalEnergies is also advancing its Tilenga project in Uganda, where the company’s efforts aim for a net gain in biodiversity. The project will protect 10,000 hectares of forest from deforestation and restore 1,000 hectares of tropical woodland. Additionally, TotalEnergies is focused on boosting populations of endangered species, including lions and elephants, in the Murchison Falls National Park. Equally crucial are the actions Total has pledged to avoid, with the company emerging as a pioneer in voluntary conservation, excluding operations in sensitive areas such as UNESCO World Heritage sites and the Arctic.

Chinese mining group CMOC shares this commitment to overhauling the practices of its sector. Guided by its Biodiversity Vision, CMOC Brasil has implemented significant conservation actions, such as a reforestation program in the country, where it has planted over 89,000 saplings and reforested 1,448 hectares. What’s more, CMOC’s environmental control plan includes 34 biodiversity monitoring sites, ensuring ongoing efforts to protect animal and plant populations in Brazil’s Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes.

At CMOC’s TFM copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, meanwhile, the company is focused on conserving local plants adapted to the challenging conditions of the area. Through its partnership with the University of Lubumbashi, CMOC has advanced scientific understanding of heavy-metal-tolerant plants and is helping to restore copper-rich soil areas. In 2022, CMOC cultivated over 2,500 plants, with some used for revegetation programs and others donated to local communities. As a result of these efforts, CMOC has protected roughly 40 copper flora species around its TFM site over the last 15 years.

Meanwhile, CMA CGM, a French leader in maritime shipping, is protecting marine biodiversity through its innovative “zero loss” policy, prioritising container security and fleet management to prevent environmental harm. Since 2020, the company has launched its Reef Recovery program, aimed at restoring coral reefs – critical ecosystems that support a quarter of marine biodiversity. Working closely with WWF, CMA CGM is supporting conservation efforts in France, South Africa and the Philippines, underscoring its commitment to healthy oceans and the vital biodiversity they sustain.

The bottom line

Moving forward, governments have a critical role to play in facilitating and expanding the private sector’s contribution to biodiversity, even if they fail to deliver meaningful political cooperation. At a minimum, the public sector must remove barriers that stifle corporate investment in sustainability, offering a clear, consistent regulatory framework that incentivises long-term environmental responsibility. From creating tax breaks for companies that invest in nature restoration to establishing carbon markets and setting mandatory reporting standards for biodiversity-related risks, government measures can empower businesses to act, ensuring they can make meaningful strides in preserving ecosystems.

Given the fragile COP16 deal offering little progress from the breakdown of November’s talks last November, the private sector must fill the gap left by governments’ ongoing inaction. With their resources, technological capabilities and influence, leading companies in industries such as mining and energy are in a unique position to lead meaningful change – now is the time for others to follow suit to drive nature restoration efforts and set the standard for global biodiversity leadership.

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With policymakers in Brussels steadily eroding the EU Green Deal ahead of next month’s European elections, governments, NGOs and scientists have joined forces to counter this short-sighted political point-scoring. On 14 May, environment ministers from 11 member states issued a joint letter calling for the reversal of obstructionist countries’ sudden opposition to the Natural Restoration Law’s final green light.

This initiative notably arrived a day after 140 environmental NGOs published an open letter lambasting the EU’s green backtracking, particularly fueled by the likes of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

Lamenting how Europe’s “basic environmental standards” are being scrapped “to appease industry lobbyists,” the letter’s signatories highlight the host of other diluted, blocked or outright abandoned Green Deal files “despite the growing evidence of looming ecological collapse.”

With calls for a European “right to a healthy environment” re-emerging in May, achieving this noble ambition will require a broad coalition of incoming MEPs to crack down on ecologically-destructive industries’ excessive lobbying influence while fending off a potential far-right, anti-green lurch.

Big Tobacco ‘poisoning the planet’

In this climate, the tobacco industry remains one of Europe’s worst offenders. Take the conflict of interest scandal involving Jan Hoffman, a former DG SANTE official who had worked on issues of tobacco traceability right before jumping to Dentsu Tracking, the tobacco industry-linked firm controversially awarded the contract to run the EU’s tobacco track and trace system.

Big Tobacco continues to aggressively lobby EU policymakers to delay effective, citizen-first policies, such as the recommendation on smoke-free environments to tighten rules on tobacco usage in public places as well as the long-awaited revisions of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and Tobacco Taxation Directive (TTD). BAT has notably made clear its intention to interfere with the latter, blatantly disregarding the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)’s Article 5.3 lobbying rules as well as its ITP Protocol’s Article 8 stipulations on industry-independent track and trace.

This lobbying-induced regulatory vacuum enables the industry to continue freely polluting and maximising profits at the expense of Europe’s social and environmental well-being – a reality highlighted by the European Parliament’s Working Group on Tobacco in its new White Paper. The fruit of a multi-sector collaboration including MEP Pierre Larrouturou, NGO coalition the SmokeFree Partnership and WHO FCTC Program Director Kelvin Khow, the White Paper cites a landmark WHO report revealing how the tobacco industry is “poisoning our planet.”

Beyond causing over 8 million preventable deaths annually, Khow’s contribution spotlights how Big Tobacco also destroys 600 million trees, razes 200,000 hectares of land and guzzles over 20 billion tonnes of water. Tobacco production accounts for 5% of global deforestation and over 80 million tonnes of annual CO2 while cigarettes remain “the most littered item on the planet,” with roughly 4.5 trillion highly-toxic filters polluting the world’s oceans, beaches, parks and soils every year.

Moving forward, the MEP-led White Paper rightly advocates for the TTD-TPD revision process to address this scourge. According to its authors, WHO FCTC-aligned measures such as banning cigarette filters, imposing “polluter pays” clean-up obligations and prohibiting tobacco companies from promoting greenwashed ‘ESG’ credentials will be crucial in tackling Big Tobacco’s environmental carnage while countering its lobbying influence.

‘Big Toxics’ dissolving Green Deal

A leading White Paper contributor, the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has rightly questioned why the “public interest firewall…on public health matters,” applied to the tobacco lobby – in theory if not in practice – has not been extended to Europe’s chemicals industry. Dubbed the ‘Big Toxics,’ the industry’s four largest chemicals companies and three EU trade associations are amongst the biggest spenders in Brussels, outspending even Big Tech according to the CEO’s LobbyFacts initiative.

This excessive influence has delayed the REACH regulation reform aimed at enhancing public health and environmental protection against toxic chemicals. Aggressively opposing REACH from its inception using dubious research, countless loophole requests among a wider arsenal of influence, the Big Toxics continue to use fearmongering narratives to impede its much-needed revision.

While the Commission resisted the industry’s initial assault on the Green Deal’s chemicals pillar, the chemicals lobby has capitalised on mounting political aversion towards green regulations. With key Green Deal files falling off the agenda, Big Toxics are now targeting the EU proposal to ban polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – so-called ‘forever chemicals. 

According to the CEO, PFAS’s devasting impact in Europe includes an estimated €52-84 billion in annual health costs – likely contributing to cancer and fertility issues – and €10-20 billion in environmental restoration costs in addition to the “unquantifiable damage and suffering” these toxic chemicals generate. With the Big Toxics lobby shielding its companies from responsibility for this ecological and social plague, EU policymakers must take a strong stand.

Carmakers driving green goals into wall

As with the Big Toxics, Europe’s automotive industry has seized on the changing political winds to dilute the Green Deal’s ambition. Led by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), the industry’s lobbying machine went into overdrive ahead of the vote on the Euro 7 regulation setting limits on highly-polluting car emissions like nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulphur dioxide (SO2). According to environmental NGOs, these efforts helped to secure a regulatory freeze for exhaust pollution, with Transport & Environment’s Lucien Mathieu claiming that the car lobby’s victory proves that it is ”back in control.”

Ahead of the watered-down Euro 7 deal finalised by MEPs and member-state delegates last December, experts from the Consortium for Ultra-low Vehicle Emissions (CLOVE) warned that its lack of progress on emissions rules could generate €100 billion in health and environmental costs by 2050 due to excessive nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution from combustion engines. Responsible for 49,000 premature EU deaths every year, NO2 also indirectly fuels the formation of Particulate Matter (PM), which causes a further 240,000 excess annual deaths.

As environmental consultancy CE Delft has highlighted, these premature deaths could be slashed in half if cars’ road emissions matched the misleading levels reported in laboratory testing. The automotive industry continues to exploit this regulatory loophole on lab versus real-world emissions testing, with lobbyists using a series of undeclared Commission meetings to maintain a status quo subjecting European citizens to lethal, avoidable emissions.

Defending environmental rights

Building on MEPs’ recent ban of Amazon lobbyists over their unwillingness to transparently engage with policymakers concerning labour rights and well-being issues, the next Parliament should consider red-carding the bloc’s most toxic and high-spending industry lobbies. Doing so would send a powerful message that Europe places its citizens above corporate interests while helping create the conditions for a long-overdue right to a healthy environment in Europe.

With a new crop of young, ambitious environmental activists set be elected to the Parliament and civil society calls mounting for the Council of Europe to enshrine environmental health into the continent’s human rights system, a window of opportunity is opening for European institutions to take decisive action. Working in close collaboration with NGOs and researchers, MEPs must launch a sweeping counteroffensive against the Green Deal’s betrayal and the noxious lobbying influence at its core.

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You’d think the top clean tech investments come from the United States, China or Brazil. Look again on the right side of this chart to show how green economies actually perform. Israel is a top 4 with Denmark, Germany, and Sweden.

A new report called the Global Green Economy Index shows that although the perceived hot spots in clean tech investment appear to be in China, the return on investment is something else entirely. Since we cover the Middle East region we’d like to point out that Israel ranked particularly well on the cleantech dimension, according to the report, at slot #4 out of 27 national green economies.

The report developed by a Washington based group called Dual Citizen looks at 37 different datasets and combines details such as domestic policy frameworks, cleantech investment and green tourism.  We hope that somehow Green Prophet’s work on highlighting the news of the region contributed to this report. You can link to the whole report here (links to PDF), which gives in-depth analysis for those investors targeting geo-specific regions.

Since the US economy has sank, with it has gone the solar industry. We hope there are still safe refuges for investors looking to put their investment funds into companies backed by countries that have the policy to support the green tech industry.

Jeremy Tamanini, the founder of Dual Citizen sent Green Prophet the report: “Green reputations are a vital component of overall country brands and the Global Green Economy Index provides government and private stakeholders in the green economy a unique tool to track, analyze and improve upon performance in this sector,”  he said, pointing out Israel’s leading role. 

Some more highlights of the clean tech report:

The report shows that the United States and China – the two largest greenhouse gas emitters – are making perceived gains in this sector largely due to the size and economic opportunity of their clean tech markets.  But their overall performance continues to lag behind that of their European counterparts like Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

Experts may view the world’s largest economies as the best targets for cleantech investment but smaller nations with relatively mature cleantech sectors exhibit more robust investment climates according to data.

The post Israel’s a Top #4 in Clean Tech Investment Performance appeared first on Green Prophet.

1,000 cars have been donated by the Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation to the recent Jeddah flood victims

Heavy rainfall in Jeddah in Saudi this January led to the deaths of a reported four people and left hundreds more families stranded and distraught as they dealt with the flood. Although the floods in 2010 did not cause the same level of destruction as the 2009 floods which left over 120 dead, many Saudis feel that the city’s flood protection remains inadequate.

So whilst the donation of 1,000 cars will no doubt be valuable to the victims of the floods, what is really needed is clear policy and plan of action to improve Jeddah’s flood defenses.

I have previously reported in the issue of flooding in Jeddah and concerns by citizens that not enough is been to done to combat the causes.  A short documentary was released in February by a group of influential figures in the region highlighting the slow clean-up following the floods.

Writer Ahmad Al-Shugari called for a solution which would ensure an end to the floods, a timescale for action as well an estimate of the cost of the efforts to improve flood protection.

In response to the floods, ten thousand household items have been donated to the victims by the Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation and distribution began at the start of this month.

Donations to the people of Jeddah consist of 4,200 air conditioning machines, 1,300+ washing machines, 2,000 cookers, 2,400 refrigerators and 600+ carpets.

Charities included Al Bir Association, Al Faisaliya Women’s Charity, Alahya Centers, the Women’s Charity Association and Almustawda’ Alkahiri have also been providing food for the affected victims, as well as assistance in rebuilding their homes.

Let’s hope that alongside these generous donations emerges a clear plan to help improve the city’s flood protection, which will ultimately better serve the victims.

:: Image via Arab News.

For more on Saudi’s green news see:

Saudi Citizens Release Documentary Criticizing Lack of Flood Protection

Four Steps to a Greener Hajj (part 3)

Saudi’s Soaring Construction Industry Could Negate Costly Water Investment

The post Flood Victims Get New Cars in Saudi appeared first on Green Prophet.

Feed-in Tariffs (FIT) are increasingly being offered by governments and utilities worldwide, because they simply are the fastest, most efficient way to get more renewable energy installed. The UK is the latest to show record growth as a result of offering to pay for clean power produced. In just the first six months since offering their FIT, UK official figures published by UK energy regulator Ofgem show that an astounding 15,468 installations have been registered. Both Israel and Turkey recently offered FITs. Today it is Uganda’s turn.

What is exciting about the Uganda offering is its position on the map relative to a recent World Bank grid extension that we covered here to expand the grid in order to facilitate load sharing of peak energy demand as air conditioners rev up on hot summer afternoons throughout the Middle East.

The World Bank grid plan connects up the profligate energy user MENA nations like Saudi Arabia and extends the grid across the Suez and down through Egypt, into the African nations of Eritrea and Ethiopia.

These two nations are right on Uganda’s border. This gives Uganda potential to be a renewable energy exporter – with a good renewable development plan. And that is exactly what Uganda has just published.

Uganda’s Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (REFIT) offering lays out a very specific plan by the type of renewable energy sought, by the year desired, by the MW required (by capping the total by year), and importantly: including the rate at which the payments will predictably step down as more megawatts are added, as adoption spreads.

Given how how detailed and well thought out the Ugandan plan is, this could be a very good driver of growth in renewable power, and lead to Uganda becoming a regional energy exporter.

FIT pioneer Spain has provided lessons in what not to do, to the rest of the world following in its FIT footsteps, and Uganda is no exception. Spain had to reduce its payments retroactively – and even to reduce the operating hours of solar power plants! – because it was taken by surprise by the success of its FIT in driving renewable investments, to far more installations than it budgeted to buy power from.

“The key in phasing out FITs – along with subsidies for conventional energy, which the International Energy Agency estimates far exceed renewables subsidies worldwide – is a gradual reduction in subsidies, to avoid any sudden shocks that would send investors fleeing, and to avoid retroactive cuts,” says Platts Renewable Energy Report editor, David Jones, as reported by Andrew Williams at Renewable Energy World.

Uganda’s 20 year power payment offers under its REFIT program will be administered by its Electric Regulatory Authority.

According to Feed-in Tariff expert Paul Gipe, Uganda seeks installations totaling just 7.5 MW of solar power by 2014, but will pay the most for that at $0.362 cents a kwh. The next highest paid power is for wind, and Uganda wants much more: 150 MW by 2014, and will pay $0.124 cents a kwh for the power. Biogas is the next highest paid renewable energy source at $0.118 cents a kwh, and it is looking for 50 MW by 2014.

It also has similar amounts and payment rates for biomass, landfill gas, bagasse (a biofuel from sugarcane waste) and three different small hydro power offerings, from micro systems of a few kilowatts to 20 MW systems. It wants 75 MW of geothermal power, and is offering $0.077 cents a kwh over the 20 year FIT.

An exciting development for the first African nation to develop renewable policy.

Image: Gamesmuseum

More on MENA Feed in Tariffs:
Israelis and Investors to Benefit from Feed-in Electricity Tariffs
Turkey Joins 78 Others to Pass Feed-in Tariffs To Encourage Renewable Energy
Israel Offers a Too-Low Rate For Wind Feed-in Tariff

The post Uganda’s Smart New Feed-in Tariff Could Ease MENA Energy Issues appeared first on Green Prophet.

At 80 million, Egypt already has the highest population in the Arab world, and it is growing fast economically, with over 6.5% growth expected this year. Its demand for electricity, understandably, given these pressures, is extraordinary.

Egypt has recently had blackouts due to electricity shortages, sending rioting protesters into the streets. It could have taken a timid route to build fossil energy to supply its rapidly growing population. But instead it is implementing an admirably bold policy to act effectively to get 20% of renewable power on its grid by 2020, with 12% coming from wind power.

Our previous story noted that Egypt has no lack of interested renewable energy bidders. A total of 72 international companies have already expressed interest in the formal tender to be held in 2011 by obtaining the documents to make bids.

The World Bank is estimating that 7,200 Megawatts could potentially be developed by 2022 in the Gulf of Suez area, which it ascertains to be among the best wind resources in the world.

Looking towards the European Union, Spain, Japan and German for funding loans, Egypt has proved adept at utilizing Clean Development Credits to fund renewable energy projects, with a loan of $1.2 billion Egyptian pounds from The World Bank. It is considered the only Middle Eastern nation to be among the best investment spots for renewables worldwide.

The nation had already put out bids for solar production and selected several companies to go forward with contracts to produce solar power for its energy-hungry nation. This year, Egypt is turning its attention to adding wind power contracts. The first of these wind farm contracts have already been signed. Egypt teamed up with Abu Dhabi last year on a 200MW wind farm near the Gulf of Suez. Next, once it has met its wind power production target, it plans to request bids for a smaller amount of nuclear power: 1 GW, by 2019.

From a US perspective, such a straightforward renewable energy policy is enviable, indeed. Egypt’s government makes the decisions on buying renewable power.

::Egyptian Wind Energy Association

More on Egypt’s energy:
Egyptian Energy Crisis Sends Protesters to the Streets
Egypt in Top 22 Nations for Renewable Investment Potential
21st Century Egypt Powers Two Villages Entirely With Solar Power

The post Egypt Requests Bids to Get 2.7 Gigawatts of Wind Power by 2016 appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Republic of Turkey has just joined the throng of rapidly growing developing nations that are offering a Feed-in Tariff (FIT) to developers of renewable energy, in order to put more renewable power on the grid. A FIT is a guaranteed payment by the kilowatt-hour, for energy produced. Because these pay just for the power produced, they are risk-free policies for governments to enact, so long as the price is neither so low that they are ineffective, nor so high that the initial investment in building the clean fuel-free energy infrastructure costs ratepayers too much.

More and more developing nations are choosing this route. Not just the powerhouses of China and India, but small developing nations like Thailand and Tanzania as well. In all of them, the feed-in-tariffs have led to more investment in renewable energy generation and an increased share of renewables in the electricity mix. And not just for developing nations.

WRI counts a total of 78 countries, states, or provinces that have passed feed-in-tariffs for renewable energy in the last few years. A FIT can result in quite a rapid change. For example, after the state of Gujarat in India passed a renewable energy tariff, power purchase agreements were signed for the delivery of 500 MW of solar within just six months.

However, the rate chosen is the key to success. For example, my own electric utility – Northern California’s PG&E – has long offered a payment that is virtually unknown, because the rate the utility will pay is so low. While there are many successful drivers of renewable energy – particularly solar – in California, the PG&E FIT has never been one of them. So most PG&E customers with solar roofs – including this author – use PG&E’s net metering program instead, to amortize their investment in solar.

I see the difference, personally. Less than 100 miles from where I live, a different California utility (SMUD) does offer an excellent Feed-in Tariff, and by contrast, theirs has been fully subscribed. But a too-low rate has no effect.

That mistake has just been made by one of Turkey’s Mediterranean Sea neighbors.  Israel just passed a FIT that is too low to drive project development.

Turkey is ideally positioned to benefit from a strong rate that would drive rapid development, as it has a powerhouse economy at home growing at over 5% annually, and a geographic advantage. Turkey is well positioned to supply the European grid and has a pending smart grid connection to Europe.

However, it looks as if it is following Israel’s example, and setting its price too low to encourage development. Its Feed-in Tariff law actually places a limit on total solar energy projects: of 600 MW annually, through December 2013, and then authorizes the cabinet to determine the limits afterwards.

It offers to pay $0.073 per kilowatt-hour for wind and hydroelectric power and wind energy, $0.105 for geothermal energy and $0.13 for energy from either waste (such as biomass or municipal solid waste-to-energy projects), and for solar energy.

A disappointed Tanay Sidki Uyar, head of the Turkey branch of European Association for Renewable Energy (Eurosolar) told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review, “A law which is enacted during a period in which United Nations’ regulations instruct countries to use more renewable energy should have been much more encouraging.”

He added, “While Germany is seeking to get 100 percent of its energy from renewables by 2050 and England aims to reduce carbon emissions to zero, Turkey’s law – a country which has great wind and solar energy potential – should have promoted renewables far more.

For a rate to act as an incentive, it needs to be twice or three times the average electricity price, at least initially, while the infrastructure is being built and paid for. These rates fall short of that.

Image: ERIO

Related stories on Feed-in Tariffs:
Israel Offers a Too-Low Rate For Wind Feed-in Tariff
Israelis and Investors to Benefit from Feed-in Electricity Tariffs
Turkey Unsure to Look East or West for Renewable Energy Development

The post Turkey Joins 78 Others to Pass Feed-in Tariffs To Encourage Renewable Energy appeared first on Green Prophet.

The extension of Section 1603 cash grants for large-scale solar developments in the US – tucked into the tax bill – were dealt a blow on Saturday. This could affect R&D developments.

In a rare weekend session, US Senate Democrats tried to bring up for a vote whether to reduce Bush era tax cuts, due to expire in 2010. They failed, because Republicans prevented the bill from coming to the floor, using their now familiar procedural trick, the filibuster.

Republicans abuse Senate rules to prevent votes on progressive bills. The vote failed, getting only 53% of the Senate vote, which in most democracies would be a win. But a rule essentially allows a 40% minority to say they are never quite ready to take a vote on some bill they don’t like, which means that to bring anything to a vote takes 60% agreement. Republicans now have a 46% minority in the US Senate. Anything over 40% means they can hold the US hostage to their wishes to keep bills from being voted on up or down.

Republican Senators in the US, some of whom make as much as $19 million a year, openly refused to allow any bills to come up for a vote until the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires are extended.

Democratic Senators wanted to let the tax cuts for the richest expire on schedule, saving $600 billion. Much smaller tax cuts for the middle class (families earning up to $250,000) they would extend, because with unemployment at a record 9%, many US families are struggling with unemployment. Anyone earning less than that would get a tax cut. The bill included much needed unemployment extension and other finance-related policy.

One little-noticed casualty of the latest example of this Republican extortion is the remarkable renewable energy policy contained in the Obama administration Recovery Act. One in particular, that 30% tax credits for building new large scale solar projects could be taken as cash grants by companies with no profits to take the tax credit against. This is due to expire on December 31.

To prevent it expiring, Senator Baucus (D) slipped an extension of the 30% tax credits into the tax cuts bill at the last minute with virtually no fanfare. How little? I am virtually the only US journalist to have noted it. Here is the Baucus amendment in the tax cuts bill. If the entire bill had been allowed by the Republicans to come up for a vote, Senators could vote on each of these items, and a simple majority, such as the 53% above, would likely have renewed them.

Baucus Amendment 4727: To change the termination date , by extending till December 2011, these renewable energy provisions of The Recovery Act:

1. Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – cash in lieu of tax credit for businesses not making a profit and unable to take the 30% tax credit on building utility-scale solar projects

2. Tax credits for heavy hybrid and natural gas vehicles and a 30% investment tax credit for alternative fuel refueling stations.

3. Tax breaks for ethanol, 36 cents a gallon for blenders, and 8 cents a gallon for small producers. A 54 cents per gallon tariff on ethanol imports.

4. A $1-per-gallon production tax credit for biodiesel and biomass diesel and the small agri-biodiesel producer credit of 10 cents per gallon extended through 2011.

5. A 50-cent-per-gallon tax credit for biomass and other alternative fuels.

6. Tax credits for energy-efficient appliances and homes.

8. Adding $2.5 billion in funding for Section 48C the advanced energy manufacturing 30% tax credit for companies manufacturing advanced clean energy products and materials.

9. Reinstating the Research and Development tax credit.

Unlike democratic nations in Europe and Israel, in the US, a very powerful fossil fuel industry has long been able to prevent renewable energy bills from passage, through the misuse of the filibuster by Republican proxies in the Senate, funded by the industry. So, to pass renewable energy policy here, Democrats must slip the language into unrelated bills and hope to get them past the ogre at the gate.

It is simply foolish in the US for Senators to openly espouse a renewable energy policy here, because the media is fully controlled and the airwaves are blanketed with blowhards from the Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute and Americans for Prosperity and other front groups, all put in place to shoot down any policy that would help move the US off fossil fuels.

It’s a silly way to run a supposedly first-world democracy. But that’s how it is.

As a result, US clean energy policy has to be slipped into unrelated bills, a little at a time, with the hope that it won’t catch the attention of the big money devoted to keeping the status quo. Thus, the production tax credits credited for building wind energy were attached to a must-pass vote on the Bush bank bailout of 2008.

That is why most of what passes for renewable energy policy in the US was slipped into The Recovery Act, the 2009 bill to stimulate the economy after the Great Recession, and passed during a brief three month period when the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority before Teddy Kennedy died.

And now that The Recovery Act is set to expire, so is US renewable policy. This now crippled democracy seriously needs outside help!

Image: Christiandivine

More on clean energy politics:
Luz Rises Again, as BrightSource, in California
Jordan Politics Hampers Climate Change Event
Obama Tried to Get Saudis on Board with Copenhagen, Wikileaks Reveals
Please Truth-Bomb the US Voter!

The post Utility-Scale Solar Projects Become a Casualty of Republican Hostage-Taking in US appeared first on Green Prophet.

Who says that academia has to be detached from the real world?

The world of academia is notorious for being detached from the real world.  There are plenty of good reasons why it’s called the “ivory tower”.  Because sometimes you just don’t care why Jacques Derrida chose to spell the word difference as differance, and it really won’t make any impact on your daily life if you understand Heidegger.  But even though academia is, by definition, motivated by pursuing knowledge (and not action), some pursuits of knowledge can be very useful in the real world.  Tel Aviv University is hoping to prove that environmental research is one of them.

Tomorrow morning, Tel Aviv University will be hosting a conference (that is open and free to the public) titled Beyond the Ivory Tower: The contribution of academic research to the creation of environmental policy.

The university describes the motivation for organizing the conference as such:

“Israel has an abundance of academic research in the environmental field, with knowledge that can assist and promote decision making processes. However, in order for policy makers to utilize this academic information effectively, it is crucial to bridge the gap between researchers and policy makers by providing accessible and practical information that will create cognizant decision making.

The conference will address the potential for academia’s contribution to the design and implementation of environmental policies at the local government level. Specifically, the seminar will address the contribution of the Environmental Policy Clinic at Tel Aviv University to the implementation of the environmental bylaws of the Israeli Freedom of Information law in several local governments in Israel.”

The conference will be held in Hebrew (with simultaneous translation into English), and the keynote speaker is Professor Miranda Schreurs, the Director of the Environmental Policy Research Center and Professor of Comparative Politics at the Free University of Berlin.

The conference will take place tomorrow between 8:45am and 1pm in Hall 101 of the Naftali Building at Tel Aviv University.  For more information go to the conference website.

Image via: Shlomi Fish

Read more about recent and upcoming environmental conferences::

Energy Conference in Israel Becomes Arena for Debating Natural Gas Deal with Egypt

Egypt to Re-Think Wastewater Treatment at Upcoming Conference

Israel Shares Strategies for Taking Back the Desert Oasis November 8-11, 2010

The post Academic Research and Environmental Policy Conference at Tel Aviv University Tomorrow appeared first on Green Prophet.