Khaleej Times: Abu Dhabi targets 90% waste recycling by 2018

Ironically, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East also offer the greatest potential for using Renewable Energy - an abundance of solar power makes them ideal locations for solar thermal power, solar photovoltaics and for the use of solar water heaters and airconditioning systems. The cities which are closely packed also offer fantastic opportunities for recycling waste - which is where this proposal to recycle 90% of he waste in Abu Dhabi becomes interesting.

This is going to be a development that I shall watch. I am guessing that the plan will work as follows:

1. Plastic bottles, aluminum cans and recyclable food and grocery packaging will end up being collected in recyclable trash bins and shipped to India and Pakistan where huge industries exist in reprocessing these materials

2. Ditto for paper - I am aware of paper being shipped to India and Pakistan from the UAE already. My guess is that the paper collection activity will be streamlined and made more efficient

3. Used engine oil will be collected more carefully. India used to be a major center for processing used engine oil, but the Government of India banned this after a poisoning incident where some crooks mixed it with cooking oil and ended up blinding and killing people in India in the 1980s. However, with the sharply increasing price of engine oils, I can foresee used engine oil getting reprocessed once more

I have questions about the processing of sewage and food waste, however. I am not sure if the food waste would be composted or if it would continue to be buried. And whether the sewage would be processed into fertilizer or just burned. Sewage also offers the opportunity to extract methane for use as a fuel. There are advanced technologies available that would help here - at least two US companies, one in Texas and the other in California offer technologies to process food waste and sewage into gasoline and jet fuel. Some of this is currently being bought by the US Air Force from the company in Texas, and the Californian company has a project in Japan as well as one in San Francisco. Perhaps, the UAE will consider inviting these companies to use their technologies in Abu Dhabi. Who knows - this may even increase the amount of waste processed to over 90%.

Here's wishing the UAE well!

Solar Light Bulbs - An Invention that This Blog Has to Love

Considering that this blog is called "Showing Fossil Fuel the Fist," a product like the Nokero (for "no kerosene") solar light bulb has to be something to instantly fall in love with! While I can see from their website that they are marketing these bulbs in Pakistan, I hope that they plan on entering the Indian market next. India is a country where even large cities suffer from 8 to 12 hours of power failures a day. These bulbs should sell to both the poor as well as the not quite impoverished population in that country.

Here's wishing the Nokero guys good luck!

Very Interesting way of Powering Cellphone Towers

Ecogeek is one blog that I follow and enjoy. It does not try to foist the political attitude (left wing and extremist, of course) that bigger blogs like Treehugger try to put out as propaganda these days. And this is a good post that has implications for every country that has a cellphone network: http://ecogeek.org/wind-power/2995 Using Vertical Axis Wind Turbines to power cellphone towers is an innovative idea - the towers are at the location where they need to be, they are compact, and they save on energy generated at a distant location, probably using fossil fuel.

India and Pakistan are both investing large amounts of money in upgrading their respective cellphone structures. I hope that both countries will look at this technology. I have written about Helix Wind and their turbines on this blog before and their website is: http://www.helixwind.com/en/ The original CNET post that Ecogeek links to is at: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10395216-54.html?tag=mncol;title

China Throws Down a Renewable Energy Challenge to the World

While it is currently one of the world's most heavily polluted countries and it needs to import over 90% of its oil, China has decided to act in a manner that needs to be applauded: http://seekingalpha.com/article/142617-china-becomes-global-green-leader-with-massive-solar-projects?source=yahoo I am grateful to Dr Mayraj Fahim for this link showing where South Asian countries, which enjoy the same climatic conditions and suffer from similarly high pollution, are lagging seriously behind. So, for that matter, is the USA where the only action forward seems to be Barack Obama's pious talk along with the constant and stale applause of his drum-beaters in the media and in the blogosphere. While well intentioned US plans like the Pickens proposals fall by the wayside, the Chinese seem to power ahead with their desire to insulate their country from the vagaries and whims of the oil producing nations and of oil traders and their manipulations.

Yes, China has coal - so does India, but the Chinese consider their coal reserves a finite asset. India has no hesitation in preserving some of its own coal reserves while it encourages massive environmental degradation in Indonesia, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere by mining for coal there and pollutes the air and the seas by shipping it back to India. And, though India has recently articulated a massive proposal to work on solar power, it is going to be difficult for it to do much as it is way behind China on the neccessary manufacturing infrastructure to produce solar and other RE equipment.

However, this is a situation that could be a wake-up call if you ask me. There is no reason why South Asian countries - and India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc all have excellent engineers and facilities with which to manufacture / develop renewable energy products. This could be the spark with which to ignite a powerful flame (well, yes, this is an inept simile) of Renewable Energy in South Asia. Our antions would be wealthier because of money saved, our air, water and soil cleaner, and our workers treated more humanely as they no longer have to work in near-slavish conditions in Arab countries.

Let's hope this competition is joined, and, at the soonest.

Tiny Maldives Sets an Example for Bigger SAARC Countries in Working to go Carbon-Neutral

In one of the most crowded parts of the world which has the sad characteristic of being horribly polluted, South Asia crowds millions into a once beautiful region that is now dirty, which has disease, malnutrition and whose hard-working people find their governments sending much of their money away to the Middle East to buy expensive fuels. It iss here that the Maldives, a tiny island nation, has now decided to set an example by working to go carbon neutral within a decade as this post on Earth2Tech explains: http://earth2tech.com/2009/03/16/clean-energy-island-maldives-goes-carbon-neutral/

While I worked briefly at the Vijaya Hospital in Chennai some years ago, I got to know a number of Maldivian people including some of the seniormost politicians in the country. The one thing that you could rest assured about when you met any of them, was that they would be extremely polite and soft-spoken. Many of them also had strong views about the development of their island paradise. That is why, their recent fears about their beautiful country getting submerged if Global Warming continued have, most probably, prompted their efforts in setting an example to the rest of the world.

Let me not sugar-coat what happens in the Maldives, though - about ten years ago, the air in tiny Male was very badly polluted because of the large number of vehicles there. But, the Maldivians had some respect for the environment that I did not see anywhere else in the region. For example, dropping any trash - even a cigarette butt - in the sea could get you prosecuted as some Indians found out when they got slapped with heavy fines. The intention to do something positive was there. And that is what, I think, is pushing the Maldivians to make the changes that they seem set on making.

I am prepared to wager a bottle of fine wine that the Maldivians will achieve what they are setting out to do with time to spare. Their government and people do work together, after all, and do not suffer from the imperious politician-citizen disconnect that you find in other parts of South Asia. My only hope is that this new approach would find favor and imitators among the politicians and people of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the three large nations in the region and the worst polluted ones as well.