Drastic increases in oil prices and increased awareness of the limited availability of traditional fossil fuels are giving the new and renewable energy sector enormous momentum, with many of the world leaders in the field of photovoltaics (solar power), wind power and other environmentally friendly energy schemes accelerating product innovations that are being embraced across the region as alternative power sources.
The landmark Bahrain World Trade Centre towers will be the first of their kind in the world to use wind energy. Wind power will be harnessed by the building's three massive turbines, which are supported by bridges between the two towers, and will provide around 11-15% of the electricity needs of the two office towers, according to Ameinfo.com.
Also in Bahrain, the master-planned US$1.3 billion Bahrain Financial Harbour development will be fed by the innovative North Shore District Cooling Network, phase one of which is due to be completed by the start of 2007. It will provide about 30,000 Tons of Refrigeration (TR) to the entire complex. District cooling is gaining popularity because it delivers value to customers in comparison with conventional approaches to building cooling, and it consumes far less energy than conventional cooling systems. According to a recent study, district cooling will reduce peak power demand in Bahrain by over 400 MW by 2020.
District cooling is being developed in Bahrain without reliance on potable water supplies, as it can use seawater to directly cooling the chillers, or incorporate water treatment plants for producing cooling tower make-up water. Alternatively, irrigation water or other non-potable water can be used. The end result is a win for the environment as well as for district cooling customers.
'District cooling can save governments throughout the region substantial power, water infrastructure and operational costs,' said Sarah Woodbridge, Group Director Exhibitions, IIR Middle East--organizers of The Middle East Electricity Exhibition, that will take place at Dubai International Exhibition Centre from 11-14 February 2007--the event will showcase many of these new innovations as part of its strong annual focus on the New and Renewable Energy sector.
'Booming development in Bahrain is creating significant new demands for power and water,' added Woodbridge. 'Centrifugal water-cooling chiller plants reduce power demand by almost half and its natural gas-powered water-cooling chiller plants reduce power consumption by over 90%--it also leads to reductions in air pollution and carbon dioxide--the greenhouse gas that causes global warming.'
The Government of Dubai recently announced its adoption of a 'Sustainable Development Policy', a unique new initiative that applies world-class social and environmental standards to the organization's activities. A new Renewable Energy Division will be responsible for 'green' buildings, energy and water conservation and management, value-added real estate and 'green' power generation, and intends to set an example for other Dubai-based organizations in developing sustainable development practices. It is creating an in-house team of experts in 'Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design' (LEED¨), the world's premier certification program for sustainable buildings.
The International Energy Group (IEG), the region's first international strategic alliance to promote clean and renewable energy, also recently announced a new initiative to support the ongoing efforts to rebuild Lebanon by providing sustainable infrastructure know-how. Lebanon imports around 97% of its energy needs, which has adverse economic and environmental effects. This initiative is designed to help create easy access to know-how, world-class expertise and project development in the utilization of advanced energy technologies and sustainable design principles that have proved to be a success in providing credible economic, social and environmental benefits.
Further encouragement for new and renewable energy comes from the fact that property investors in Jordan and the UAE have expressed their satisfaction concerning the implementation of energy-efficient solutions in buildings and various premises which drastically reduce energy costs, especially given the real estate boom across the region.

The world seems preoccupied with future energy sources, rightfully so. But the ability to store and transport energy is easily as important, sometimes more so, than the energy itself.
Car engines are inefficient, because they must throttle up and down. If they operated under a constant load, their efficiency would soar. That's also true of electricity generation. The problem with electricity is the difference between peak and base demand. At peak demand, much less efficient means to generate power are used. If a way could be found to store electricity efficiently, the world energy picture would change. There are three or so main ways that electricity is stored.
Pumped-storage hydroelectric involves using electricity to pump water uphill to a reservoir, typically at night. During peak demand, the water is flowed downhill through a turbine to generate electricity. Usually, the pump and turbine are the same unit, only run in reverse. Depending on the evaporation rate and other factors, the system can recover about 70% or so of the electricity stored into it. Despite the loss, it is worthwhile, because of the difference in cost between peak and base electricity demand, and it is the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electricity. There are about 300 of these worldwide, Worldoil.com said.
About 33 GWh (5.5%) of the total electrical capacity in the European Union is stored in this way. The US has 19.5 GWh of electricity in pumped storage, including Lundington, on the shore of Lake Michigan. There, the upper reservoir is only 330 ft above the lake, but can store 15,000 MWh of electricity and deliver at a 2,000 MW rate.
A new and interesting variation on this is pumped seawater storage. Wherever there is a shore with some elevated land where a reservoir could be built, pumped storage could be placed. There are many such places in the world. There is one of these on Okinawa, Japan. Another one is under proposal for Hawaii. The problems are corrosion and barnacles, both of which are extremely pesky, but not insurmountable.
Compressed air is another energy storage technique. Air is compressed in an underground cavern during off-peak times and is produced later to meet peak demand. The cavern can be created in salt by solution mining (dissolving with water). Compression is done with an electrically powered turbo-compressor, while expansion is done with a natural gas-powered heater/ expander, which drives a combustion turbine. The process uses only 30 to 50% of the gas normally used for generation. Installations exist in Huntorf, Germany, and McIntosh, Alabama. Another facility has been under development for five years in Norton, Ohio. A 200-MW proposed project in Iowa will use natural caverns and voids for air storage from a wind farm.
Other types of energy storage include flywheels and superconducting electromagnetic fields, but these have quite a way to go for anything but niche applications, so I won't even mention them.
Of course, when you think of electricity storage, you think of batteries. After many decades of development, batteries are finally beginning to achieve the energy density, power density, longevity and cost that are required to usher in an age of electric vehicles and more.
Work at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) may have made the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than 200 years. Although ultra-capacitors have been around since the 1960s, they are relatively expensive and only recently began being manufactured in sufficient quantities to become cost-competitive. Like their name implies, they store and discharge energy, but over a much shorter period of time than a battery.
They are ideal for regenerative braking systems in fuel-cell vehicles, due to the high-power transfers of short duration in braking and accelerating. They have some nice advantages over batteries - more than a 10-year lifespan, temperature tolerant, high charging and discharging efficiency - but until now, they held 25 times less energy than a similarly sized lithium-ion battery. The breakthrough in the LEES ultra-capacitor comes from using vertically aligned, single-wall carbon nanotubes, which overcome the energy density limitation.
Nanotube-enhanced ultra-capacitors have the potential to combine the long life and high power of a commercial ultra-capacitor with the higher energy storage density normally available only from a chemical battery.
Another potential step-change in battery development comes from a small company called Altair Nanotechnologies. The new battery uses nano-titanate material in place of graphite as the negative electrode in a conventional lithium ion battery. By doing this, the company says that no interaction takes place with the electrolyte, which is what causes the overheating that is common in lithium ion batteries. This results in an inherently safe battery capable of high-rate overcharge, a potential 20+ year life with a wide operating temperature range (60¡F to 165¡F).
What's "driving" the electric car is energy independence for oil importers and environmental concerns, but for consumers, it's the cost of an equivalent "electric" gallon of gas, which is less than a $1.00. Of course, money is money, meaning, the cost of the vehicle, drive train, energy storage system and so on have to be figured in. But remember, plasma televisions cost about $25,000 in 1997. Today, you can buy one for less than $1,200. So there's reason for optimism.
The world is going to need double, and eventually triple, the energy we now use. Storage will play a key role. It is an enabler.

Japanese researchers have simplified and improved a common method for generating hydrogen gas, a potentially green energy source.
The approach, developed by Shunichi FukuzumiÕs group at Osaka University, is a modification of existing methods of hydrogen production where several reactions form a cycle, in which electrons are transferred from a readily available source to hydrogen ions. FukuzumiÕs adapted method, which he describes as an important step for the use of hydrogen as a clean energy source, uses a molecule that combines two stages of the cycle, Rsc.org said.
Usually, electrons from a donor molecule, such as ethanol, are supplied to a mediator that can pass them on to a molecule that has been activated by ultraviolet light. The light-activated molecule then supplies the electrons to the hydrogen ions in the presence of a platinum catalyst, generating hydrogen gas.
FukuzumiÕs method uses a molecule that plays the role of both the electron mediator and the light-activated species, transferring electrons from ethanol to the hydrogen ions. Their results show a significant increase in the efficiency of the process and the amount of hydrogen produced.
Hydrogen gas is a promising green energy source because it produces only water when burnt, rather than climate-changing greenhouse gases; however, there remain several significant obstacles for the commercial production of hydrogen as an energy source. The discovery of a cheaper metal catalyst to replace the expensive platinum system would be beneficial, but the efficient transfer of electrons to the hydrogen ions is only half the story.
Fukuzumi used nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), an enzyme cofactor that plays a vital role in energy production in living cells, as the source of hydrogen ions. A method of generating hydrogen ions using just water and sunlight represents the next challenge for the future of hydrogen generation, said Fukuzumi.

Nissan Motor Co. announced plans last week to launch a next-generation fuelcell vehicle in the early 2010s in Japan and North America as part of its mid-term environmental strategy.
Nissan Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga said at a Tokyo press conference outlining the company's "Nissan Green Program 2010" that it will introduce from fiscal year 2010 gasoline engine technologies that will enhance fuel economy and at the same time reduce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to diesel engine levels. The company aims to introduce a new fuelcell vehicle using an improved fuel stack--the main part of such vehicles--developed in-house after 2010 that will offer performance on par with gasoline-power automobiles, Shiga said.
Fuelcell vehicles run on the power produced when oxygen in the air combines with hydrogen that's stored in the fuel tank--producing only harmless water vapor, according to Yahoo.com.
But for the mid-term future, Shiga said the company plans to focus on the internal combustion engine as the primary power source for its vehicles, and will concentrate on improving engine efficiency.
"To develop vehicles that are truly environmentally friendly, we need to make significant advances in internal combustion technology while working on electrical power sources in parallel," said Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Nissan's executive vice president for research and development in a statement.
As part of that effort, Shiga said in Tokyo that Nissan plans to develop a "three-liter car" capable of traveling 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, using just three liters, or about three quarts, of gasoline. The company hopes to unveil a new model in Japan in 2010. "If you have to compensate for the cost of new technologies, you'll find that (gasoline) is very high performance for small cars in terms of balancing the costs for the customer in terms of fuel efficiency. You get high performance and low mileage," said Carlos Tavarez, executive vice president for product planning and corporate strategy.
Nissan will also unveil a 100-percent bioethanol fuel-ready model for the Brazilian market by 2009 and plans to introduce an electric vehicle starting in Japan during the early part of the next decade.

MIT professor of chemical engineering Gregory Stephanopoulos (l), postdoctoral associate Hal Alper (c) and professor of biology Gerald Fink have engineered a new strain of yeast that can produce ethanol more rapidly and efficiently. (Solaraccess.com Photo)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientists have engineered yeast that can improve the speed and efficiency of ethanol production, a key component to making biofuels a significant part of the US energy supply.
Currently used as a fuel additive to improve gasoline combustibility, ethanol is often touted as a potential solution to the growing oil-driven energy crisis. But there are significant obstacles to producing ethanol: One is that high ethanol levels are toxic to the yeast that ferments corn and other plant material into ethanol.
By manipulating the yeast genome, the researchers have engineered a new strain of yeast that can tolerate elevated levels of both ethanol and glucose, while producing ethanol faster than non-engineered yeast. The work is reported in the Dec. 8 issue of Science.
Fuels such as E85, which is 85 percent ethanol, are becoming common in states where corn is plentiful; however, their use is mainly confined to the Midwest because corn supplies are limited and ethanol production technology is not yet efficient enough, Solaraccess.com said.
Boosting efficiency has been an elusive goal, but the MIT researchers, led by Hal Alper, a postdoctoral associate in the laboratories of Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos of chemical engineering and Professor Gerald Fink of the Whitehead Institute, took a new approach.
The key to the MIT strategy is manipulating the genes encoding proteins responsible for regulating gene transcription and, in turn, controlling the repertoire of genes expressed in a particular cell. These types of transcription factors bind to DNA and turn genes on or off, essentially controlling what traits a cell expresses.
The traditional way to genetically alter a trait, or phenotype, of an organism is to alter the expression of genes that affect the phenotype. But for traits influenced by many genes, it is difficult to change the phenotype by altering each of those genes, one at a time.
Targeting the transcription factors instead can be a more efficient way to produce desirable traits. "It is the makeup of the transcripts that determines how a cell is going to behave and this is controlled by the transcription factors in the cell," according to Stephanopoulos, a co-author on the paper.
The MIT researchers are the first to use this new approach, which is akin to altering the central processor of a computer (transcription factors) rather than individual software applications (genes), says Fink, an MIT professor of biology and a co-author on the paper.
In this case, the researchers targeted two different transcription factors. They got their best results with a factor known as a TATA-binding protein, which when altered in three specific locations caused the over-expression of at least a dozen genes, all of which were found to be necessary to elicit an improved ethanol tolerance, thus allowing that strain of yeast to survive high ethanol concentrations.
Because so many genes are involved, engineering high ethanol tolerance by the traditional method of overexpressing individual genes would have been impossible, says Alper. Furthermore, the identification of the complete set of such genes would have been a very difficult task, Stephanopoulos adds.
The high-ethanol-tolerance yeast also proved to be more rapid fermenters: The new strain produced 50 percent more ethanol during a 21-hour period than normal yeast.
The prospect of using this approach to engineer similar tolerance traits in industrial yeast could dramatically impact industrial ethanol production, a multi-step process in which yeast plays a crucial role. First, cornstarch or another polymer of glucose is broken down into single sugar (glucose) molecules by enzymes, and then yeast ferments the glucose into ethanol and carbon dioxide.
Last year, four billion gallons of ethanol were produced from 1.43 billion bushels of corn grain (including kernels, stalks, leaves, cobs, husks) in the United States, according to the Department of Energy. In comparison, the United States consumed about 140 billion gallons of gasoline.
The research was funded by the DuPont-MIT Alliance, the Singapore-MIT Alliance, the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Energy.
Anne Trafton is a staff writer in the MIT News Office. This article was republished with permission from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.