Strandbeest: beach-blown plastics that have a life of their own

Theo Jansen transforms plastic bottles and conduit into skeletal frames – complete with movable joints, wings, and bellies – that are able to walk powered only by wind.

Iran is most known in global news for its nuclear ambitions. But the country has resources for wind energy, the international renewable energy organization IRENA has announced. The NGO which is headquartered in Abu Dhabi has just released wind maps which show where Iranian winds blow.

Lebanese renewable energy have fallen short of its ambitious goal of reaching 12 percent of Lebanon’s energy needs by the year 2020. But now it is in the middle of building its first wind farm at about 60 MW in the country’s north.

The 2013 America’s cup will be long remembered as one of the closest matches in sailing history and one of the most unlikely comebacks in sporting history when Emirates Team New Zealand came within seconds of securing the America’s cup; but eventually lost when Oracle’s team USA followed a two race penalty and six race […]

Among nature’s most devoted heroes throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA) has released renders of a new bio boat that will be used to educate children about the Red Sea’s numerous (albeit largely threatened) bio marvels. Funded in part by the U.S. Forest Service, which has […]

Jordan is the first country in the Arab world to offer its residents an opportunity to earn money through feed-in-tariffs (FITs). The Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) announced last week that citizens of one of the world’s most fuel-deprived nations can sell energy generated with solar panels for 120 fils per kilowatt/hour (kw/h) and wind power […]

Who’s got the wind in the Middle East? Morocco and Egypt have the biggest wind power plants, but don’t discount Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Wind power has taken a backseat to solar power across the Middle East and North Africa, but there are still some ambitious projects in wind power […]

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 […]

Siemens Bows Out of Solar, And Looks to the Wind

Calling all windy Middle East and Mediterranean countries. German giant Siemens is looking for your offshore wind. The German industrial giant Siemens, a 165 year-old company, shocked us a bit with the news that it would be selling off its half billion dollar investment in Solel, an Israeli solar energy company that it bought in 2009. At […]

The Middle East is continuing to show itself capable of boosting alternative energy sources without facing political backlashes from opposing sides of the aisle. In Iraq, large multinational corporations are working with the country’s ministry of electricity to see clean and renewable resources become a reality in the post-war environment, where investment is expected to […]

The jury on the Stars of Science reality TV show proved that the “Shattel-Power” vertical wind turbine is not as efficient as its designer Mahmoud Shattel proclaimed it to be, but the 24 year old electrical engineer from Jordan still intends to find investors who will help him bring this clean energy concept to households all over […]

A West Bank hospital gets wind powered with 700 kw. Few things are as deadly as a hospital without power, but a new wind turbine is about to blow away one hospital’s fear of losing theirs. The largest of its kind in the Palestinian territories, Al Ahli Hospital provides care to 600,000 Palestinians living in […]

Eole Water from France has developed a water-producing wind turbine and Gulf states are drooling at the jowls to have at least one of their own. The WMS 1000 currently undergoing testing in Dubai following tests in France and Abu Dhabi captures moisture in the air that is then condensed and filtered to standards exceeding […]

Determined to stay its unpopular nuclear course, Iran is now turning to wind power and other renewable energy sources to blow past sanctions. Last year Karin reported that the current regime plans to produce 5,000 MW of solar energy by 2015, and in May this year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put aside an additional $620 million […]

With a rotor diameter of 100 meters and hub heights of 80 meters, GE’s 1.6-100 MW turbines have the highest power production capacity of any turbines in their category. A 50 MW wind farm in a town near Istanbul will be the first site in Europe to use GE’s revolutionary 1.6-100 MW wind turbines, GE […]

Turkey’s massive wind resource has long been recognized. Now China’s wind giant Sinovel has signed an agreement to supply turbines to build 600 MW of wind projects in Turkey, in what could be the company’s largest overseas deal to date. In the deal sealed this week in Beijing when Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan visited China’s […]

Not content with their ambitious achievements in Abu Dhabi, now Masdar is spreading clean energy worldwide. A small 6 MW wind farm in the Seychelles has broken ground and will start start providing 11 percent of the languorous tropical resort islands’ modest electricity needs, thanks to Abu Dhabi’s Fund for Development (ADFD) and Masdar, the […]

Afghani designer Massoud Hassani transformed a childhood toy into a giant bamboo minesweeper powered by the wind. There are more land mines in Afghanistan than there are people, so Massoud Hassani turned a childhood toy into an extraordinary wind-powered bamboo mine sweeper that destroys and tracks them. Made out of bamboo and biodegradable plastic, the […]

Egypt is now close to awarding a contract to build a 1,000 megawatt wind farm, to be up and running in 2016, that it first announced last year.A wind farm this size has few equals worldwide. Egypt has some of the best wind power potential in the world, and its government is beginning to tap into this source of free fuel in earnest, since passing its plan to get 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2020, in order to stave off climate change.

Investment in renewables grew 104 percent in 2010 in the Middle East and North Africa region- is this a step towards a renewables revolution? According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme, new investment in renewables in the Middle East and Africa region grew 104 percent in 2010 to $5billion. From inspiring solar projects […]

Morocco already has the world's most ambitious solar target. Now it is starting on wind.Morocco's ascendance in renewable development is continuing apace. Morocco's state-run power utility has just invited companies to bid on five wind farm projects with a total power generation capacity of 850 megawatts, as part of its plan to build 2,000 MW of wind power by 2020.

Even as the country tries to sort out its new political identity following the first democratic elections in decades, Egypt is forging ahead with its wind power plans. Big time. As part of its target of going from its current 550MW of wind to a staggering 2,690MW by 2016 to reach 7,200MW by 2020, Egypt is putting […]

A huge hydro-wind hybrid power station will double Morocco’s entire installed hydropower capacity – and be a world’s first. Morocco is developing a project that will be the largest in the world to combine two natural clean power allies, wind and water, in a hybrid power project rated at a little over 1 GW (1,070 […]

Looking deeper into the pitfalls and promise of Desertec at Dii conference in Cairo. Green Prophet’s Tafline is there and reports from the field. Instead of scrambling to find funds and legislative support for the Desertec initiative, a handful of people gathered at the Dii conference in Cairo to explore the project’s overall environmental sustainability. […]

With crippling floods every year and regular power outages, a new internationally financed wind project in Pakistan is breezy green news to us. Iran, finding itself increasingly isolated due to US-backed sanctions, has been pressing energy-deficient Pakistan to connect with Iran’s natural gas “peace pipeline“. Natural gas is better than coal (which is killing miners) […]