Jordan takes another definitive step towards a renewable future with a little help from its Czech friends There will be no more stinky kerosene for the first solar-illuminated Bedouin tent in Jordan. Gas and kerosene lanterns have been replaced with a far more sustainable resource at the Rumana campsite in the Dana Biosphere Reserve. Donated […]
BrightSource vs. the desert tortoise. Is BSE too big to fail? Shortly after Google announced its largest investment to date in BrightSource Energy’s gargantuan solar thermal project, the Californian company filed its first $250 million public offering on Earth Day. Forbes calls this an initial test of the market’s appetite for utility-scale solar energy. A […]
Defiant women, some “worth 100 men” are reshaping the Arab world in grassroots activism. While news of a minority of Muslim women in burkas continues to spread islamophobia in the West, a growing number of Arab women (veiled or otherwise) are shedding their typical conservative image and gaining more visibility in the pro-democracy protests around […]
$10 million is the lucky number for two Israeli cleantech companies and Al Gore. Tigo’s Maximizer can add hundreds of hours worth of sun to your utility bill. A fund that Al Gore’s chaired has already invested $10 million in an Israeli cleantech company – GreenRoad, a company that has a software solution to manage […]
Several Mediterranean countries are hatching a joint plan to bring 20GW of renewable energy on board by 2020. In July, 2008, several Mediterranean countries came together in Paris, where they hatched a plan to coordinate renewable energy generation and energy efficiency initiatives. At the end of last year, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) resolved […]
As a new political order struggles to assert itself in the autocratic states of the Middle East novel challenges – and possibilities – emerge. In looking toward the future, social Greens throughout the region would do well to coordinate an agenda geared toward a sustainable tomorrow.
Every time I find more news about the solar-power generating windows made by Pythagoras Solar, I am inspired – for my own house. We are currently selling our own house – which somehow grew too big for us since our kids grew up and left – and switching from reading books to reading on an […]
Turkey has a critical role to play in a clean energy future, says former vice president Al Gore. But when is it going to start taking that role seriously? The unusual political identity of Turkey — a stable, democratic, Islamic country — serves as inspiration for democratic reformers in the Arab world. Its government is […]
Green Prophet reporter Arwa speaks to Rafi’a Abdul Hamid, a woman from the deserts of Jordan who has been trained as a solar engineer to help bring clean electricity to her poor village For many living in the harsh and desolate deserts of south Jordan, life without electricity is the norm. Either the infrastructure which […]
Petrol and electricity are considered birth-rights, even God-sent in the Arab world. How can this reality compete with the use of renewables? Grid parity, the point when the cost of power generated from renewable energy resources become equal or cheaper than conventional power costs, is around the corner for many countries. In the Arab world […]
Israel has already issued 25 conditional licenses to companies building solar energy installations near the Gaza strip. Israel’s National Public Utility Authority (PUA) has received numerous requests to build solar facilities along the edge of the Gaza strip, according to Xinhua News Agency. Two out of the eleven companies would provide 180MW of electricity generated […]
Middle East to Become a $90 Billion a Year Solar Exporter? A report from international energy consultants AT Kearney, quoted in the The Saudi, said that the oil-rich Middle East has the potential to become a solar "boom center" within ten years, creating 100,000 jobs and able to export $90 billion a year from solar projects.
Israel powers up a new round of EUREKA grants – two make electricity from municipal water supplies A €33 million fund to help fuel the development of 25 projects in renewable energy, biotechnology and clean-tech industrial manufacturing across Europe was announced by the EUREKA network at a meeting in Israel Sunday. Since Israel’s chairmanship that […]
Israel’s first commercial photovoltaic field is slated to be completed at Kibbutz Ketura in May. As Susan laments in her recent post (What Holds Israeli Renewable Energy Back?), Israel has been slow in deploying solar energy at home, despite its pioneering R&D work in this field. And last week the country seemed to take another step […]
How is Israel ever going to meet its 10% renewable goal? Israel with its population of 7 million hardly needs much total electricity. Only 40 Gigawatts (40,000 MW). To get 10% of its power from renewable energy, as it has pledged to do by 2020 – would take only about 4,000 MW of renewable power. […]