13 Oct 2009:
First Passenger Flight Flown
Using Kerosene Made from Natural Gas
A Qatar Airways flight from London to Qatar has
become the first passenger plane to be powered by cleaner-burning natural gas that was converted to kerosene. “Today’s flight opens the door to an alternative to oil-based aviation fuel,” said Malcom Brinded, international executive director of Royal Dutch Shell, which is partnering with Qatar Petroleum to produce so-called gas-to-liquid (GTL) kerosene from Qatar’s abundant natural gas reserves. During the five-hour flight, the Qatar Airways Airbus A340-800 jet was powered by a 50-50 blend of GTL kerosene and conventional oil-based kerosene jet fuel. An Airbus spokesman called the flight “a major breakthrough which brings us closer to a world where fuels made from feedstocks such as wood-chip waste and other biomass is available for commercial aviation.” The spokesman predicted that by 2030, 30 percent of jet fuel would be derived from GTL or biofuels. Shell and Qatar Petroleum are building a plant in Qatar capable of producing one million tons of GTL kerosene annually.
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14 Sep 2009:
Iraq Approves Plan to
Convert Rotting Dates to Bioethanol
Iraqi officials have endorsed
a plan to convert dates into biofuel, an innovative project they hope will boost a once-thriving agriculture economy burdened by years of drought, government sanctions and war. A United Arab Emirates-based company will produce bioethanol from the dates that farmers can no longer use because they are rotting, said Faroun Ahmed Hussein, head of Iraq’s date palm board. The nation produces about 350,000 tons of dates annually, but consumes only about 150,000 tons. While Iraq once was a major date exporter, farmers now feed much of the rest to animals rather than export them because of the poor quality, Hussein said. Government sanctions and war have exacerbated entrenched problems such as high soil salinity and inefficient irrigation to ravage Iraq’s farming sector, the nation’s largest employer. “Farmers will be happy to sell their rotten dates instead of throwing them away,” Hussein said. He would not identify the company, how much bioethanol it would be able to produce, or how much it would cost.
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14 Jul 2009:
Euphrates River Dwindles
Due to Dams and Long Drought
The legendary Euphrates River
has dwindled to perilously low levels in Iraq because of a severe two-year drought, the construction of dams in Turkey and Syria, and wasteful water management by the
Iraqi government and farmers, the
New York Times reports. The flow of the 1,730-mile river has been so sharply reduced that lakes and wetlands are drying up; rice, wheat, and barley farmers are unable to irrigate their fields; renowned Mesopotamia date crops are withering; and fishermen are losing their livelihoods. Unless the situation improves, the Euphrates’ flow could soon be only half that of several years ago, the
Times reports. Particularly hard-hit are the marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which had been drained by Saddam Hussein but were on their way to being restored several years ago. Once again, however, many sections of marshland are dry. A major reason for the Euphrates’ reduced flow is the network of seven dams in Turkey and Syria, which limit the water downstream. Turkey has recently released more water into the Iraqi section of the river.
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02 Jul 2009:
Turkey Resumes Dam Project
The Turkish government
will revive a $1.6 billion dam project on the Tigris River despite concerns that it will displace tens of thousands of people, damage wildlife habitat, and destroy historic archaeological sites. Preparations for the Ilisu hydroelectric dam were suspended for six months after financial institutions in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria announced that they were withholding financial support because of environmental concerns. But Veysel Eroglu, Turkey’s environmental minister, said the financing would be made available for what the government considers an important part of a $32 billion plan to boost the economy in the nation’s southeastern corner, a region disrupted by armed conflict between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party. Eroglu said improvements have been made to assure the project will meet international standards. Turkish officials say the dam, part of a larger proposed network of dams called the Southeastern Anatolia Project, would generate 1,200 MW of electricity after it is completed in 2013. But environmental advocates warn that the project would inundate as many as 80 towns, villages, and hamlets, and displace up to 80,000 people.
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30 Apr 2009:
Dubai’s Urban Sprawl
In these photographs, NASA satellites capture the
explosive growth of Dubai on the Persian Gulf between 2002 and 2008. These false-color thermal images of Dubai — one of the 7 United Arab
Emirates — depict vegetated areas in red, buildings in gray, and the desert in beige. The image at left, taken in October 2002, shows the early stages of construction of Palm Jumeirah, a vast commercial development built by dredging 3.9 billion cubic feet of sand from the gulf and depositing it in the shape of a giant palm tree. The finished look of Palm Jumeirah — which contains shops, hotels, and apartments and is protected from the gulf by 7 miles of rocky breakwater — can be seen in the image at right, taken in November 2008. That recent image also shows the exponential growth of Dubai, a city-state of 1.2 million and a major commercial hub in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Just to the east of Palm Jumeirah, the fairways of an irrigated golf course, pictured in red, can be seen.
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08 Apr 2009:
Saudi Arabia Threatened
By Move to Curb C02 Emissions, Official Says
Saudi Arabia’s chief climate negotiator said that the drive to slash CO2 emissions, put a price on carbon, and make the transition to renewable sources of energy is
a serious threat to the country and he urged industrialized countries to help the oil-producing nation develop alternative energy technologies. Interviewed at U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Mohammad Al Sabban said, “It’s a matter of survival for us, so we are among the most vulnerable of countries . . . Saudi Arabia has not done that much to diversify.” He said that at key climate talks this December in Copenhagen, Saudi Arabia would argue that any taxes on carbon should focus on emissions, not energy produced — a proposal that would favor oil over highly-polluting coal; that government subsidies should be eliminated for food-based biofuels; and that wealthier countries should transfer renewable energy technology to Saudi Arabia. A top priority, he said, would be the development of solar power in the desert kingdom. “Adaptation is not only to the impact of climate change but also the impact of climate policies,” said Al Sabban.
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11 Feb 2009:
Saudi Minister Speaks Out
Against Rapid Shift to Renewable Energy
The Saudi Arabian Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, contends that an overemphasis on promoting renewable energy development could lead to a “nightmare scenario” in which investment falls in oil exploration while alternative energy is not ready to pick up the slack. Speaking to a group of oil executives in Houston, Naimi said that the massive and “highly efficient and economical” nature of the oil-based economy will make a rapid move to renewable energy supplies “costly and impractical." In apparent reference to the Obama administration, which is promoting a move to renewable energy, he said that forcing such a shift could have a “chilling effect on investment in the oil sector” and could lead to energy shortages if projections of renewable energy output prove too optimistic. Meanwhile, the German magazine
Der Spiegel reports that despite European success in expanding energy production from renewables,
the continent’s overall carbon dioxide emissions are not falling because the European Union’s emissions trading system is too lax.
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13 Jan 2009:
Persian Gulf States
Pour Billions Into Green Revolution
Persian Gulf leaders who have built their fortunes on oil are
investing billions of dollars in green energy research and technology in hopes of cementing the region’s role as a global energy supplier for a new era,
The New York Times reports. In addition to setting up renewable energy research parks across the region, the leaders are making major investments in clean energy research and development around the world. The crown prince of Abu Dhabi is investing $15 billion in renewable energy development. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a state-owned university in Saudi Arabia, has given a Stanford University researcher $25 million to find ways to make the cost of solar energy competitive with coal and has given a University of California researcher $8 million to develop green concrete. In Qatar, the government has invested more than $220 million in a British low-carbon technology fund — far more than Britain has invested itself. Next week, Abu Dhabi will host the second World Future Energy Summit, which is fast becoming a leading global gathering on renewable energy.
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31 Oct 2008:
Experts Call For Environmental Action In Arab World
Arab leaders should take urgent action to address water shortages, air and marine pollution, and other environmental problems, a new report warns. Released at a conference of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development in Bahrain, the report is
a first-ever look at the region’s eco-challenges by independent experts. It estimates the cost of environmental degradation — caused by population growth, urbanization, and climate change — at 5 percent of the region’s GDP. (One striking example: Illness caused by transportation-related air pollution alone costs more than $5 billion a year.) Yet government spending to tackle those problems falls well below 1 percent. While the region is responsible for only about 5 percent of global climate change, its greenhouse gas emissions are rising rapidly, and the area is experiencing severe water shortages, increasing drought, and rising seas that threaten loss of agricultural land. Other root causes of the region’s ecological crisis include wars, weak environmental-protection laws, and lack of scientific research, according to the study, which was reported in the
Daily Star of Lebanon.
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30 Oct 2008:
The Lowly Olive Pit
Joins the Biofuels Revolution
Spanish researchers say they have found
an environmentally friendly use for the estimated 4 million tons of olive pits generated as waste by the olive processing industry each year: convert them to biofuels. Reporting in the
Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology, scientists from the Universities of Granada and Jaen said they created a biofuel by placing the pits, or stones, in a large pressure cooker and adding enzymes that degrade the pits and produce sugars. The liquid was then fermented to produce ethanol. The researchers reported a yield of 5.7 kg (12.5 pounds)of ethanol for every 100 kg (220 pounds) of olive pits. Using olive pits has a major advantage over corn, sugar cane, and other food-based biofuels because it uses inedible food waste and does not require planting new fields. The researchers said that although the number of olive pits available worldwide is not huge, their conversion to ethanol demonstrates the advantages of using food and forestry wastes in biofuel production.
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17 Oct 2008:
Abu Dhabi Invests
in British Offshore Wind Farm
The government of the Gulf state of
Abu Dhabi will invest about $1 billion in the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, in the United Kingdom, stepping in after Royal Dutch Shell backed out last spring. The $5 billion London Array will consist of 271 turbines to be built in the Thames Estuary, generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 750,000 homes. The project is key to the British government’s goal of building enough offshore wind power to supply all residential electricity by 2020. London Array’s first phase is expected to be completed in 2012. The Danish energy group Dong owns half of the project; the German company E.ON now owns 30 percent, after selling 20 percent to Abu Dhabi’s Masdar clean-energy fund.
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22 Sep 2008:
Sharp Drop In Birds
Documented in New Global Census
Many common species of birds are in decline worldwide because of deforestation, the rapid growth of industrial-scale agriculture and fishing, the spread of invasive bird species, and hunting, according to a new report from the U.K.-based conservation group, Birdlife International. In its report
“State of the World’s Birds,” the group said that in the past quarter-century, nearly half of Europe’s most common birds — including turtle doves, grey partridges, and corn buntings — had declined, some by as much as 80 percent. Numbers of twenty common American birds, including the bobwhite quail, have dropped by more than 50 percent in the past 40 years, and in Asia species such as white-rumped vultures — which once numbered in the millions — are nearly extinct. Industrial-scale fishing fleets, which use countless baited hooks on long lines, have sharply reduced the number of some seabirds, including albatrosses, the report said. “Birds provide an accurate and easy to read environmental barometer, allowing us to see clearly the pressures our current way of life are putting on the world’s biodiversity,” said Mike Rands, Birdlife’s CEO.
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05 Sep 2008:
World Heritage Status
Proposed for Iraqi Marshlands
The ancient marshes of southeast Iraq — nearly drained during Saddam Hussein’s rule and partly restored since his fall —
should be recognized as an ecologically and culturally significant World Heritage Site, the United Nations said. The U.N. Environment Programme and the Iraqi government plan to apply for World Heritage status for the Marshlands of Mesopotamia, which covered close to 3,500 square miles in the early 1970s but had shrunk to less than 300 square miles by 2002. Fed by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the wetlands were home to the historic Marsh Arab communities as well as abundant birds, fish, and other wildlife. After Saddam’s ouster, local residents tore down some dams, restoring more than half the wetlands, the Iraqi government says. The UNEP has spent $14 million helping to rejuvenate the marshes by planting pollution-filtering reeds and providing drinking water to locals.
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03 Sep 2008:
'Sahara Forest' Project:
Using Solar to Make the Desert Bloom
A group of architects from the UK has proposed
building
powerful solar arrays to evaporate and desalinate seawater and then use it to
cool and irrigate huge greenhouses in the Sahara and other desert regions.
Known as the Sahara Forest Project, the futuristic plan would employ
concentrated solar energy — which uses mirrors to focus the sun’s rays and
generate heat and electricity — to power seawater greenhouses. The greenhouses’
cooling and irrigation systems would lower the temperature inside the
structures by 15
° C
(27
° F),
enabling crops to grow and eliminating the need to tap into dwindling supplies
of freshwater. The project's designers, including Michael Pawlyn of
Exploration Architecture, said investors in Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and the
United Arab Emirates have expressed interest in funding demonstration programs using the seawater greenhouses.
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14 Jul 2008:
Iraq Turns to Solar-Powered Lights to Boost Baghdad Security
Solar-powered streetlights are going up on major Baghdad thoroughfares, in an effort to improve security in a country where there is never enough electricity to go around. Iraq’s Electricity Ministry plans to install 5,000 solar-powered streetlights in Baghdad and hopes to install 18,000 more across the country, 1,000 in each of the 18 provinces, reports
The Los Angeles Times. Though Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, it has few refineries and must import large quantities of diesel fuel. Its hydroelectric plants are suffering from drought, and what electricity there is often goes out as power lines are attacked.
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13 Jun 2008:
As Many Species Fall,
One May Return from the Dead
Israeli researchers confirmed that a seed found at King Herod’s fortress of Masada and coaxed into a sapling is 2,000 years old, making the resuscitated tree the
sole living member of a long-extinct species, the Judean date palm. Since many ancient seeds fail to germinate, the researchers had not been sure the seed — named Methuselah after the oldest person in the Bible — was as old as those found around it, which have been carbon-dated to about 2,000 years ago. But when the sapling grew, they collected fragments of the seed casing and ascertained its true age. Thick forests of Judean date palms once covered the Middle East, and the fruits of the tree were said to have medicinal properties. If the tree is female, it may be crossbred to produce fruit with viable seeds, leading to the possible re-establishment of the species. The tree is expected to
reach fruiting age in approximately two years.
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12 Jun 2008:
In Israel and California
Solar Technologies Move Forward
BrightSource, the company contracted by California’s Pacific Gas and Electric to provide 900 megawatts of solar thermal power in the next few years — enough to light up 630,000 homes —
opens a test solar tower this week in Israel’s Negev Desert.
The 1.5-megawatt test tower is a smaller version of the 100-megawatt facility BrightSource will build in the Mojave Desert by 2011 as part of California’s push to obtain 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The tower’s system of tiny, electronically controlled mirrors focuses sunlight on a water tank, where evaporation then drives turbines to produce electricity. This so-called solar thermal system differs from traditional photovoltaic cells that convert the sun’s rays into electrical energy. The test tower will enable BrightSource to refine the technology before embarking on the California project.
In San Francisco, a proposition to fund a
$3 million rebate program for homeowners and businesses looking to install photovoltaic systems awaits only the mayor’s signature. Homeowners would receive $3,000 or $6,000 rebates; businesses, $10,000 rebates.
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06 Jun 2008:
Another Worry in Iraq: Drought in the Region’s Fertile Crescent
This enhanced image from a French satellite shows the extent of a
sizable area of drought in parts of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey that has resulted from sparse rainfall over the past eight months.
Earth Observatory
The rust-brown color spanning the region’s breadbasket, the Fertile Crescent, represents areas where the presence of crops and vegetation is far below normal. The drought, which began during the crucial autumn planting period and continued into the winter and early spring, has meant that not only have crops directly dependent on rainfall, such as wheat, failed, but also that there has been less water in rivers and wells for irrigation. Because of the drought, Iraqi farmers are expecting their harvest to be 50 percent lower than in 2007, while Syrian farmers believe their harvest will be 38 percent below last year’s. A high-resolution version of the image is available at NASA’s Earth Observatory.
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