Green Options

The World Bank recently released a report criticizing the water sharing regime between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Will water become a new flashpoint in the region?

Jordan is planning on building a companion piece to the Red-Dead Canal while the World Bank study is on-going. In its place is a Jordan-only proposed desalination plant in Aqaba that will pump saline brine into the Dead Sea.

Shimon Peres, the President of Israel helped launch a new solar farm at Kibbutz Yavne this week. The farm uses concentrating solar power to generate electricity and hot water. President Peres said at the launching ceremony, “It is a natural way to fight terror because the oil-producing countries of Iran and Venezuela destroy our lives by terror.” He also called solar power democratic because sunlight is available to everyone.

No government aid was required for the project. It was funded entirely by Israeli venture capitalists. The cost of the electricity generated is approximately 8 cents per kilowatt hour. This price is slightly less than the cost for electricity provided by the main power supplier in Israel, the Israeli Electric Corporation.

Researchers in Israel have discovered that Japanese sea corals engage in sex switching. Similar to species of trees and more famously, most species of reef fish, female Japanese sea corals (scientifically known as fungiid coral) switch their sex so that the majority are male. This seems to be due to male fungiid coral’s better ability to handle the stresses brought on by resource scarcity.

Since over a quarter of the world’s coral reefs have already become damaged due to increasing sea temperatures, understanding how fungiids are able to become primarily male may provide researchers with alternative reproduction strategies. 

Most likely, the world’s first solar community will be housed in one of the most politically-driven regions of the world.

Israel’s recently discovered natural gas reserve off its northern coast has raised both hopes and fears. Hopes that this will enable the building of more natural gas power plants to replace existing coal power plants, and fears that it may lead to future conflict with Lebanon.

Olive branches have traditionally been used as a symbol of peace, but as a symbol of renewable energy? Olivebar, a company based in Israel, is using olive press waste to create a long-term, renewable energy source.

Engineers have created a new type of road capable of turning the vibration caused by cars into electricity.

The revolutionary new surface, created by engineers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, uses piezoelectric crystals embedded in the asphalt to generate up to 400 kilowatts of energy from a 1 kilometer stretch, enough to run eight electric cars.

Commenting on the innovation, a spokesman from the UK Environmental Transport Association said, “Many predict a massive shift to electric cars, and it may be the roads themselves that help provide some of the power needed.”

Innowattech, a green energy technology company in Israel, is developing energy-generators for three main transportation methods: railroads, roads, and airport runways. The concept uses piezoelectric generators — Innowattech’s specialty — to transform kinetic energy from passing planes, trains and automobiles into electricity. From Innowattech:

The system,based on a new breed of piezoelectric generators, harvests energy that

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More news from the piezoelectrics front: engineers from Innowattech are planning to test a network of Piezo Electric Generators (IPEG) on a 100 meter stretch of road. As with other piezoelectric devices, the IPEGs embedded in the road will turn mechanical strain into an electrical current or voltage. The IPEGs can generate energy from weight, motion, vibration, and temperature changes.

They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. In the Gaza Strip, due to the restrictions placed by Israel, one Gazan engineer has developed a solar oven that uses the abundant supply of sunlight to cook food.