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24 Feb 2017

See how banana trees are recycled into vegan “leather” wallets in Micronesia

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Forget plastic and leather, your next wallet could be made from a more ethical and eco-friendly alternative—banana fiber. Kosrae, Micronesia-based startup Green Banana Paper tapped into banana tree waste, upcycling the unlikely material into stylish and sturdy vegan leather wallets. Green Banana Paper launched a Kickstarter to bring these eco friendly wallets to the global market and help improve the lives of local farmers.

Bananas may be easy to eat, but the trees they grow on need a surprising amount of work. There are approximately 200,000 banana trees spread across the island and after harvesting, local farmers must cut down the plant every year to promote fruit production. The mass amounts of banana fiber waste are typically left on the ground to biodegrade, but Green Banana Paper saw an entrepreneurial opportunity with environmental and social benefits. Founded by New England native Matt Simpson, the social enterprise produces strong and water-resistant wallets with designs inspired by the coconut palms, ocean life, and people of Micronesia.

“Green Banana Paper wallets are not only ecofriendly; they are helping to provide a living wage to Kosraean families,” says the company. “Matt hopes to continue to scale up production, and get even more people on the island involved in this truly community-oriented business.” Green Banana Paper has launched a Kickstarter to raise funds for hiring more people and improving the quality of their products. Supporters of the project can also receive their own banana fiber wallet, which can be shipped around the world.

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30 Jan 2017

Dubai to produce bio fuel from leftover food

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There’s money in that half-eaten peanut butter sandwich or leftover pizza now making its way into your kitchen dustbin, says Dubai Carbon.
Wet organic waste such as leftover household food or restaurant waste can be converted using heat and spinning technology to create what are called biosolid fuels.
And those environmentally friendly fuels can be sold for cash turning financially burdensome municipal garbage management into a new way of making money, not losing it, says Dubai Carbon, the government agency charged with slashing emissions across the emirate.
Ivano Ianelli, CEO of Dubai Carbon, told Gulf News in an interview, that a new pilot programme under way is working to turn wet waste into a money generating fuel at new locations near source across the city by the end of March.
“We’re trying to renovate a model that is old and outdated,” Ianelli said. “What we’re doing with this is transforming a liability into a revenue stream. The converted waste can be used as a fuel source anywhere there is a furnace.”
To divert organic garbage away from the landfill, the Dubai Carbon pilot programme will flip the switch on five new localised wet-waste processing facilities by the end of the first quarter to dramatically reduce the need to truck garbage over long distances for sorting at a central plant and landfill disposal.
Dubbed “Community Waste Management”, Ianelli said the “pilot will focus on decentralising waste management and will replicate small waste processors across town.”
Reducing waste going to landfill reduces methane gas produced from decaying garbage.
Removing wide-scale garbage truck operations also slashes carbon emissions, a prime mandate of Dubai Carbon in the push to green Dubai well into the future as an international hub for green economy innovation.
The programme is in line with the UAE raising its clean-energy target to 27 by 2021 as part of its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement to fight climate change.
Ianelli said that preliminary data reveals that the average garbage collection cost per address in Dubai is around Dh6,000 per year.
With the new localised wet-waste plants, however, Ianelli said an entirely different approach will switch waste management from a responsibility to a business opportunity.
Wet waste, he said, will be converted at local mini processing plants through a heated spinning technology that removes up to 60 per cent of the moisture and results in a fluff material that can be used a fuel source and sold on open markets.
Rather than costing on average Dh6,000 per address, converted wet waste can be sold as a fuel source earning up to Dh2,000 per address on average every year.
Abundant source
There appears to be an abundant source of raw material from wet waste for conversion, according to the numbers.
A mountain of leftover food valued at $4 billion (Dh14.69 billion) is tossed into the garbage from UAE homes, eateries and large events and then dumped into shrinking landfill space every year in the UAE, said Emirates Environmental Group in 2016.
27% is the UAE target of raising it clean energy production by 2021.
6,000 dirhams a year is garbage collection cost per address in Dubai.
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23 Jan 2017

Revolutionary flapping wind turbine mimics hummingbirds to produce clean energy

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A new flapping wind turbine from Tunisia marks a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of mechanics. Until recently, scientists have been limited in their ability to apply new understandings of animal and human motion to machines, according to Tyer Wind. In the wind energy sector, this limitation has resulted in fairly simple and relatively inefficient turbines. Using 3D Aouinian kinematics that he pioneered, Anis Aouini is disrupting that space with a unique wind turbine modeled on articulations of the only bird capable of sustained hovering–the hummingbird.

Tyer Wind has replicated the mechanism that allows hummingbirds to fly in one place with their flapping wind turbine that moves in a figure 8 configuration. It has two vertical axis wings made from carbon fiber, each 5.25 feet long, that convert kinetic wind energy into emissions-free electricity. Combined, the two wings sweep an area of nearly 12 square feet, with a pre-industrial rated power output of 1kW.

Hassine Labaied, partner and co-founder of Tyer Wind, told Inhabitat this is the first time a mechanical device has successfully mimicked the hummingbird’s motion, and that the video above illustrates a pilot machine currently being tested in Tunisia. The group says their initial tests for power efficiency, aerodynamic behavior, and material resistance are encouraging, and they will release the resulting data after a sufficient period of time. (Those interested in more technical details are encouraged to take a look at this PDF.)

3D Aouinian kinematics have applications in other technologies as well, according to Tyer Wind, including external combustion engines, internal combustion engines, pumps, and marine propulsion–among others. The biomimicry revolution may not be televised, but it is definitely underway.

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18 Jan 2017

SolarWindow unveils new energy-generating glass that bends

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SolarWindow made headlines for their business-card thin solar coating for curved glass surfaces in late 2016, and now they’re going a step further with a new kind of flexible glass capable of generating clean energy. The firm created a super thin, bendable “glass ‘veneer’” that if applied to skyscrapers, cars, or even planes, could totally transform the way we produce and obtain solar power.

SolarWindow created the revolutionary flexible glass by applying layers of their liquid Electricity Generating Coating to Corning Willow Glass and laminating the product, simulating the temperatures and high pressures commercial producers utilize when they manufacture regular old stiff glass. This time they were able to produce what they call a veneer that’s again as thin as a business card, but can still generate electricity.

 SolarWindow CEO John Conklin said in a statement, “Along with our SolarWindow liquid coatings for rigid glass, we’re excited to expand our capabilities with brand new ways of generating clean electricity on almost any surface imaginable by using flexible Corning Willow Glass. As leaders in the sector, we’re setting out a clear vision for the future with this new, innovative technology.”
 SolarWindow’s vision for the glass is to refashion skyscrapers into super green “vertical power generators,” allowing buildings to generate renewable energy just by standing in the sun. But it’s not only buildings that can benefit from their new glass; as it’s bendable and flexible, the glass could be applied to cars, boats, trucks, buses, or airplanes.

The SolarWindow glass isn’t ready for the market yet, but that’s the ultimate goal. They’re developing their products under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the United States government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and say the primary goal of a CRADA is commercialization. When the glass is finally ready, it could radically help companies and families reduce their carbon footprint.

 

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10 Jan 2017

Wind power now runs all electric passenger trains in the Netherlands

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All of the electric passenger trains running in the Netherlands are now powered entirely by wind. One year ahead of schedule, Dutch railway company NS announced its entire electric train fleet is running on 100-percent wind power as of January 1, 2017, ushering in a new era of green transportation. Renewable energy advocates hope the early success will inspire planners to incorporate wind-powered trains in other high-speed rail projects around the world, including some proposed in the United States.

In late 2015, the Dutch government announced its goal to power the country’s electric trains entirely with wind power by 2018. However, early successes in rolling out the clean energy program resulted in 75 percent wind power for the trains in 2016, so the initiative made a final push and achieved 100 percent effect January 1, 2017. One of the Netherlands’ largest railway companies, known as NS, partnered with the Eneco energy company in 2015 to funnel renewable energy into its fleet of electric trains, which carry 600,000 people per day.

Electric trains on the NS use around 1.2 billion kWh of electricity a year, which is roughly the equivalent of all the households in the city of Amsterdam. Switching to a renewable source for the energy-hogging transportation will make a huge dent in the nation’s carbon footprint, which has already been shrinking over the years due to investments in renewable energy projects. The electricity used to power the Dutch trains comes from wind farms in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Finland, many of which were just recently built. Because some of those farms opened ahead of schedule, it became possible to move up the timeline for powering electric trains with clean energy.

 

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03 Jan 2017

Breakthrough technology turns coal plant CO2 into baking soda

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When it comes to mitigating the impact of modern civilization on our planet’s environment, many scientists and engineers have been focused on ways to clean up excess carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change. India-based company Carbon Clean Solutions is making headway in that area, with its unique method for turning CO2 into harmless baking powder. The method can be employed by coal-burning industries to reduce CO2 emissions and turn the waste into usable byproducts that do no harm.
Carbon Clean is putting its methods through the wringer at a coal-fired thermal power plant at the industrial port of Tuticorin in southern India. There, CO2 is captured from the boiler and used to make soda ash (sodium carbonate) which is the very same stuff housed in any baker’s pantry. Transforming the dangerous atmosphere-heating carbon emissions into harmless baking powder is no simple (or cheap) task, but Carbon Clean is pushing forward even so, and the firm is doing it without government subsidies.
The firm says this process can lock up 66,000 tons of CO2 each year from the Tuticorin plant, which is the equivalent of removing 12,674 cars from the road for the same time period or burning 6,751,435 gallons of gasoline. While many firms are still leaning on carbon capture and storage (CCS), which typically involves attempting to sink carbon underground – a process which is very expensive and has no opportunity for future profit. Carbon Clean’s method is the first large-scale example of carbon capture and utilization (CCU), wherein CO2 is essentially recycled into baking powder that can be sold off to help pay for the capture process. CCU is also slightly cheaper than CCS, costing around $30 per metric ton of CO2 captured, another item in the “pro” column for Carbon Clean.
While these efforts won’t be enough to turn coal into a sustainable industry, Carbon Clean’s technique could help fossil fuel industries greatly reduce their carbon footprints. Likewise, CCU methods of trapping CO2 could create new avenues of economic opportunity in places like India, where coal-based industry is widespread.
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02 Jan 2017

Africa’s newest sustainable biofuel grows on trees

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Until recently, the indigenous Croton megalocarpus tree common to central and east Africa was used mainly for firewood. But now Eco Fuels Kenya (EFK) is pioneering sustainable biofuel from croton nuts– without planting a single tree. As opposed to jatropha biofuel, once thought to hold immense promise as an alternative fuel but which required expensive plantations, croton nuts can be sourced from farmers. Managing Director Myles Katz described EFK’s approach as “completely local.”

Research revealed croton nut oil could be a “direct replacement for diesel fuel” in some engines, according to EFK, who describe themselves as the first and only croton nut processing company. As the tree is so common, EFK hasn’t yet needed to plant new ones. Instead, as more people found out the nuts once considered useless could bring in extra income, EFK’s harvester network grew to over 3,000 farmers. This year EFK handled 1,000 tons of nuts.

Katz told CNN, “We can buy nuts from farmers so they get an income and we have a business model that does not require $10 million of funding and a big plantation to get off the ground…Everything we source, process, and sell should be within 100 kilometers of the factory.”

On their website, EFK describes croton nut oil as “entirely environmentally friendly.” The tree flourishes without extra fertilizer or irrigation, and the nut oil production process requires little energy compared with traditional fuel production. Farmers don’t have to switch away from other crops to focus solely on croton nuts, and can even store the nuts for a year. The group says, “Croton trees’ newfound economic value promotes reforestation all over East Africa, which improves soil conditions as well as combats climate change. [Croton nut oil] replaces harmful natural fuels and since it’s produced locally and not imported, it saves carbon emissions as well.”

 The group also produces organic fertilizer from croton nut shells, and makes seedcake from pressed nuts to feed poultry. Croton nut oil is largely sold to local businesses to power generators. EFK ultimately aims to plant 300,000 trees between 2016 and 2022.
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18 Dec 2016

Can cleantech be Egypt’s greatest wealth generator?

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The Egyptian cleantech ecosystem is a few years behind its cousin, pure tech, but the sector is beginning to show signs of consolidation.

There is a chance that if the threads outlined at the Rise Up Summit in Cairo this month pull together, cleantech could indeed be the huge wealth creator that both locals and foreigners expect it to become.

“Investors are looking at emerging markets as a growth engine for cleantech,” said Fred Walti, CEO of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). “It will be the fastest growing sector for the remainder of our lifetime, it will be the greatest wealth creator in our lifetime. It’s definitely not for wimps.”

But canny entrepreneurs must know where the opportunities lie – you may be too late if you’re thinking of hitting the rooftop solar panel market now. Unsophisticated VCs also need to be educated on the trends worth backing and how to invest in them.

Future tech, future opportunities

Four areas hold potential right now, according to five cleantech experts: solar water pumps, low powered appliances, biomass, and the trend towards more decentralized power generation, both at small and utility scale.

Ahmad Gaber, chairman of Chemonics Egypt and a longtime expert in sustainability, said biomass was one area yet to be explored in Egypt and entrepreneurs should particularly be looking into anaerobic digestion. It’s a more complex and expensive system of generating energy from waste than aerobic digestion, but one that creates fertilizer as well as gas for either cooking or electricity.

Furthermore, in November the government agreed on a feed-in-tariff rate for electricity generated from recycling factories – so there is some political support for the process.

With emerging markets leading global growth in power use, M-Kopa Solar Tanzania managing director David Damberger said appliances using DC instead of AC power were the future, as off-grid solar was “pioneering” low-power devices. A television using AC power will use between 70-150 watts, while one using DC power will use less than 10.

“Why not instead of making more energy, you just [switch to appliances that] use less?” he said.

Ahmed Zahran, cofounder of Karmsolar, said the sector was moving to become more decentralised.

Future Pump founder Toby Hammond, from Kenya, and Sun City founder Ahmed Abbas were proponents of solar agricultural water pumps.

“There are half a billion people in the world who are deriving their primary income from growing vegetables,” Hammond said, creating a giant market for inexpensive water pumps.

Teaching old investors new tricks

The trick will be educating “unsophisticated investors” – the so-called smart money VCs of the pure tech world.

“A lot of investors are still fairly unsophisticated. They’re looking for the next Facebook,” said Switchmed project manager Daniel Hires. “They don’t understand that these companies have different financing needs.”

Not only do cleantech companies have much higher capital needs and a longer lead time – up to three years longer, according to LACI’s Walti – but the different cleantech markets can be difficult to understand.

For example, Karmsolar, inarguably Egypt’s most successful cleantech startup, has not taken any traditional venture capital investment. Even Flat6labs, one of the most prolific investors in the region via its accelerator program, only has two cleantech startups, Taggadod and Sunergy, amongst the 89 featured on its website.

Walti said the LACI companies sourced investment from family offices, impact funds and other non-traditional startup investors.

Getting the government on board

Cleantech, and particularly the energy sector, is one that does require some government assistance to create the right environment.

Solar, biomass and wind energy could likely not have flourished in Europe without subsidies, and in Egypt, it needs subsidies via a feed-in-tariff to compete with subsidised gas power generation.

Support for cleantech startups is coming from the country’s only approximation of a cleantech incubator, GESR, which also includes health and education in its mandate.

A government-supported pre-incubator and an incubator, both of which are for entrepreneurs working with industrial waste, will launch in January and February respectively.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI) also intends to involve itself in the sector. Technical support officer Mohamed Elwazeer said 12 technology centers providing prototyping facilities and expert support were in the process of being set up, as part of a long-delayed entity to help entrepreneurs.

The Egyptian National Clean Production Center used the Rise Up Summitto advertise its services to entrepreneurs as a body that could both help smooth bureaucratic processes and introduce startups to large industrial clients.

Cleantech Arabia, which organised the cleantech track, is at the forefront of the movement providing a launchpad for Egyptian cleantech entrepreneurs and founder Ahmed Huzayyin sees cleantech as “a way of doing things, a design, it’s a moving target”.

“As entrepreneurs like to say, they’re changing the world, but what is more world changing than clean technology?” he asked.

 

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28 Nov 2016

300 days of sunlight a year: a look at Jordan’s solar sector

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Jordan’s latest solar energy deal with a UAE company marks the largest power plant to be built on Jordanian soil.

The deal, along with importing gas from Israel in spite of public outrage, and the launch of Shams Ma’an solar project are a few indicators of Jordan’s rush to find alternative energy sources to meet rising demand.
Jordan imports around 96 percent of its energy, which costs more than 16 percent of GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund.
This high dependency on foreign energy, along with a 10 percent rise in electricity demand annually, has led the kingdom to build local production, especially after gas supplies from Egypt were cut in 2012.
Since Jordan lies in the sun belt area, solar energy is seen as one of the solutions to produce local electricity. Other sources the country is looking to invest in include wind energy, oil shale, and nuclear energy.
The renewable energy law as a motivator
The use of photovoltaic (PV) solar power is growing on both the government and private level, largely as a result of the 2012 renewable energy law allowing foreign companies to legally invest in Jordan’s renewable energy sector. The law resulted in the formation of tens of deals between the Jordanian government and foreign energy companies.
According to renewable energy consultant Hala Zeitawi, during the past two years, Jordan signed more than 20 wind and solar deals that are worth a total of 1,000 megawatts (MW), which can power roughly 400,000 homes.
In addition to foreign investment, the law permits consumers, individuals or institutions to produce electricity from personal solar cells that can be placed on rooftops, and sell the surplus to the government.
Consumers’ transition to PV power benefited the country, Zeitawi said.
The majority of those who transition, such as banks, telecoms, universities, and hospitals are heavy power users, so reducing their consumption means that the country’s dependence on foreign sources will eventually decrease, reflecting positively on the national budget.
Reducing your bill to zero
In addition to the national and environmental benefit of transitioning to solar PV systems, consumers themselves gain economic benefits. Solar systems can mean consumers can go entirely off-grid and rid them of electricity bills.
For example, the Combat Smuggling Directorate’s monthly bill of 2,750 JD, or nearly US$4,000, was reduced to zero after installing a solar PV system, said Nawras Said, head of the Jordan Customs department’s renewable energy committee. They pioneered implementing this energy model in Jordan.
In a different context, the Ayla Oasis company is developing a huge residential and tourist resort in Aqaba, and has built a solar plant that will cover the energy needs of the pumping station responsible for transferring sea water to artificial pools.
“This solar project is part of Ayla Oasis’ environmental responsibility… which is needed to solve the many challenges Jordan is facing in the energy sector,” said CEO Sahl Dudin during a speech at the project’s opening last year.
Customs department checkpoint in Aqaba. Five custom centers out of around 30 host solar PV systems.
Other institutions that have adopted solar PV systems include The Hashemite University, Al-Zaytouna University, The Hashemite Royal Court, The Children’s Museum, more than 400 mosques and the Royal Scientific Society which also released a solar PV electric vehicle charging station.
Al-Fayha’a mosque in Irbid. Jordan’s Energy and Endowment ministries signed a deal in April to provide 2000 mosques with soalr PV systems.
Telecoms are no exception. According to Zeitawi, who is also the renewable energy consultant to Umniah, telecoms are very heavy consumers. The smallest company spends no less than 10 million JDs a year, or US$4 million, and so “transitioning to PV increases the company’s revenue and acts as part of its social responsibility”.
The consultant pointed out that the three main Jordanian telecommunications companies were all installing solar PV systems. Umniah would launch a solar plant in six months, she said.
As for the industrial sector, it is also moving towards solar PV. Solar power provider ETA-max has noticed an increase in industrial clients, especially after the government’s renewable energy funding program that was put in place to support SMEs looking to make the solar switch.
Some banks recently had begun providing green energy loans as financing the cost of installation was an obstacle for many people, said Randa Al-Baker, business development engineer at ETA-max.
Of the 137 projects that ETA-max has implemented, 45 percent are residential.
One of its projects included installing solar panels over Invest Bank’s parking space, saving 65 percent of the bank’s energy consumption.
The bank’s solar PV system was intended to reduce electricity costs as well as the negative environmental effects produced by traditional energy channels, said bank CEO Muntasir Dawwas.
Although the government has promoted and facilitated the transition to solar PV systems, some see this progress slowing.
Recently, new complicated and bureaucratic procedures were put in place around the installation of solar panels, said Zawati, who assumed the reason was related to the increased subsidy rate expected to be provided by the National Electric Power Company (NEPCO).
Despite the short term challenges, the renewable energy benefits on Jordan’s environment and economy are undeniable.
So while it may seem like an obvious choice for energy importing countries such as Jordan and Morocco to transition to solar PV, even exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE are trying to implement the model as they look for long term energy sustainability that meets their countries’ growing demands.
25 Nov 2016

Rugged solar roads to hit four continents in 2017

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Solar-generating roadways could soon be a reality on roads everywhere, thanks to new technology from Europe. According to Bloomberg, Colas SA, a subsidiary of France’s Bouygues Group has been working on solar panels that are tough enough to handle the load of an 18-wheeler truck – and are currently building them into some French road surfaces, with plans to test the technology across four continents in 2017.

These panels have already undergone five years of research and laboratory tests, but before they hit the roads in a major way, the company plans to test them further by building 100 outdoor test sites over the next year. “We wanted to find a second life for a road,” Colas SA’s Wattaway Unit chief technology officer told Bloomberg. “Solar farms use land that could otherwise be for agriculture, while the roads are free.”
How does a road made of solar panels withstand the weight of a massive semi truck, you might ask? According to Bloomberg, while the panels are made with ordinary solar cells such as those that might be on your roof, they are layered with several types of plastic on top to create a sturdy casing that can withstand abuse. It has electrical wiring embedded, and is coated with a layer of crushed glass to create an anti-slip surface.

Wattaway began testing the new product last month on a kilometer-long site in the French town of Tourouvre. At 2,800 square meters in area, the embedded solar panel array is expected to generate about 280 kilowatts of energy at peak capacity. The company says that’s enough power to provide public lighting for a town of up to 5,000 people for a whole year. They also told Bloomberg they intend to test the technology in Calgary, Canada, Georgia, USA, throughout the European Union, Africa and Asia, with plans to commercialize in 2018.
Add this innovation to Tesla’s solar roof and what Solar Roadways is doing in the U.S., and it’s been a good year for unconventional applications of solar power.
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