TDIC Project

UAE is fast becoming a tourist spot. Visitors from all over the globe are flooding to this region. Tourism Development Investment Company (TDIC) has several projects to develop the region. Each of the projects has its own features and speciality. I would give the preference of one of these projects that I like most. There is one that is not so much favored.

Al Bateen Wharf Hotel is one of the best projects of TDIC. The fundamentally good thing about this project is that it is built on the west coast of Abu Dhabi city. Since the Hotel is facing the sea, it gives a presentable view. The shape and design of the building is very pleasant looking; the two blocks are connected together with three bridges. Lakes in front of the building add to the beauty of the view. There is enough are around to walk and roam around in the fresh air.

My least favorite place is the Qasr al Sarab. Its location is the main factor that makes it not so lovely hotel. It is in the far off place from Abu Dhabi. If a visitor takes all the pain to go this far there is nothing around it to entertain him. Its design and building is old fashioned and too classic. The accommodation available in this hotel is too less (only 150 rooms) that are few in comparison to other projects.

In time to come Abu Dhabi is planning to develop the city with many more innovative projects to brace itself with increasing number of tourists coming to this part of the region. These projects are full of variety and different designs to cater to various liking.

My Carbon Footprint

A Carbon Footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. I thought my lifestyle is healthy. I got the shock of my life when I got the result of my carbon footprint. It was whopping 3.63. It means I am living in a way that requires 3.63 times of the earth’s resources to be healthy in it.

My high carbon footprint is due to the fact that I use my car a lot. It causes lot of air pollution. Even for short distance, I travel by car. Secondly, my eating habit also contributes to high carbon footprint. I am non-vegetarian and eat mixed of red and white meat. Thirdly, consumption of electricity is another factor to increase carbon footprint.

Now I know how I can reduce my carbon footprint. I should try to walk short distances instead of driving. I will make sure to use vegetables more than meat. I stay indoor when I am free that makes electricity consumption too much. I should go outing and get some fresh air.

Carbon footprint is the mirror of healthy lifestyle. The less the value of carbon footprint the better is the lifestyle. We should try to analyze the lifestyle and analyze the factors of contributing the carbon footprint. We should try to reduce the value of carbon footprint.

Cool City

Global Warming is one of the most serious threats facing the world. All over the globe people and the governments are trying to make their cities cool to reduce the effects of global warming.

Locally, we can make our city Abu Dhabi cool. For this we will have to work on reducing the number and the intensity of the factors that heighten global warming. Transportation is one of the most significant factors of causing global warming. If we are able to reduce the number of vehicles that move on the road it would definitely benefit us. To do so we should improve public transport and make it accessible to different parts of the city. The frequency and the cost of this transport should be such that it should clearly have an edge over the private transport.

Due to the high temperature, the whole of this region needs air-conditioning. It is an inevitable part of the residents of the region. It is a vicious circle: to reduce the temperature, we use air conditioning that worsens the global warming scenario. Thanks to the rulers of the emirates who realized the importance of greenery and plantation to keep the environment safe.

“An Inconvenient Truth” - Summary

This documentary video talks about Algore’s campaign on global warming issue.

The video is not about Algore himself. He tries to make the global warming heard and taken seriously. He presents the evidences for global warming and mankind's link to it in a great way and he doesn't do it in a political or spleenful way. Represents the changes in temperature around the world and atmospheric carbon patterns, and he explanes that our last 20 years had the highest rates over the previous 600,000 years. before I watched the film, I didn’t think that pollution is a really serious problem and could have such enormous results, but Algore proved how big is the problem by using real and reasonable evidences.

At the end,Al Gore talks about his personal life and how he thinks that all the countries around the world should solve this problem together because it is everyone’s problem.

Do you knew"Aerodynamic Truck Trailer Cuts Fuel And Emissions By Up To 15 Percent"

Creating an improved aerodynamic shape for truck trailers by mounting sideskirts can lead to a cut in fuel consumption and emissions of up to as much as 15%. Earlier promising predictions, based on mathematical models and wind tunnel tests by TU Delft, have been confirmed during road tests with an adapted trailer. This means that PART (Platform for Aerodynamic Road Transport), the public-private partnership platform, has produced an application which can immediately be put into production.

It is expected that the cost of fitting aerodynamically-shaped sideskirts will be recouped within two years. Furthermore, the sideskirts can be fitted to approximately half the trucks currently in use in the Netherlands as the skirts can also be retrofitted.

Carbon Dioxide reduction

Prof. Michel van Tooren of TU Delft’s Aerospace Engineering faculty: 'In 2005, 10,000 new trailers were taken into use in the Netherlands. With an average fuel consumption of 30 litres per 100 kilometres, that translates into 750 million litres of diesel consumption in the Netherlands each year. We can cut fuel consumption by 5% or more for 50% of those trailers. That means a reduction of 50 million tons of CO₂ emissions a year. This research can therefore result in a substantial, structural contribution to cutting fuel consumption and an annual saving of tens of millions of Euros, next to that cut in CO₂ emissions by the road transport sector.'

He continues: 'Together with this sector we have created a practical platform for further research and development, but we still need active government participation. Just obtaining permits for all the road tests has involved a huge amount of time, energy and frustration. The next step is realizing a practical partnership between the government and industry in order to put the solutions into practice.'

see this Pagani Zonda F wind-tunnel testing

Here are two wepsites for read more formation's:

http://www.whistle.gatech.edu/archives/05/jan/10/fueltruck.shtml

Here's a company that sells them:

http://www.freightwing.com/index.html

Shedding Light on Thin-film Solar Cell Efficiency Research

Recently, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that they have moved closer to creating a thin-film solar cell that can compete with the efficiency of the more common silicon-based solar cell. The Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9% efficiency in testing at the lab, setting a new world record, according to NREL.

This is still far from the highest efficiency that was achieved in July 2007 by a consortium of researchers led by the University of Delaware (42.8% using a novel technology that adds multiple innovations to a very high-performance crystalline silicon solar cell platform) but of course there are big differences in the manufacturing costs of these two technologies as well as the potential fields of application for them.

The combination of optimizing material systems as well as optimizing processing techniques for these materials gives multiple pathways towards achieving increase in performance from solar cells that can eventually lead to grid parity in terms of cost and efficiency, which seems to be one of the biggest challenges that solar technologies are currently facing.

Renewable energy‏

Renewable energy

effectively uses natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished. Renewable energy technologies range from solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity/micro hydro, biomass and biofuels for transportation.

In 2006, about 18 percent of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, like wood-burning. Hydropower was the next largest renewable source, providing 3%, followed by hot water/heating which contributed 1.3%. Modern technologies, such as geothermal, wind, solar, and ocean energy together provided some 0.8% of final energy consumption. The technical potential for their use is very large, exceeding all other readily available sources.

Renewable energy technologies are sometimes criticised for being unreliable or unsightly, yet the market is growing for many forms of renewable energy. Wind power has a worldwide installed capacity of 74,223 MW and is widely used in several European countries and the USA. The manufacturing output of the photovoltaics industry reached more than 2,000 MW per year in 2006, and PV power plants are particularly popular in Germany. Solar thermal power stations operate in the USA and Spain, and the largest of these is the 354 MW SEGS power plant in the Mojave Desert. The world's largest geothermal power installation is The Geysers in California, with a rated capacity of 750 MW. Brazil has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now provides 18 percent of the country's automotive fuel. Ethanol fuel is also widely available in the USA.

While there are many large-scale renewable energy projects, renewable technologies are also suited to small off-grid applications, sometimes in rural and remote areas, where energy is often crucial in human development. Kenya has the world's highest household solar ownership rate with roughly 30,000 small (20–100 watt) solar power systems sold per year.

Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices, peak oil and increasing government support are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialization. EU leaders reached agreement in principle in March 2007 that 20 percent of the bloc's energy should be produced from renewable fuels by 2020, as part of its drive to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, blamed in part for global warming.^[ Investment capital flowing into renewable energy climbed from $80 billion in 2005 to a record $100 billion in 2006.This level of investment combined with continuing double digit percentage increases each year has moved what once was considered alternative energy to mainstream. Wind was the first to provide 1% of electricity, but solar is not far behind. Some very large corporations such as BP, General Electric, Sharp, and Royal Dutch Shell are investing in the renewable energy sector.

There are project called Desert Dreams in UAE you can see this video