Dubai, the land where everything is larger than life, has greenlighted plans to build the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing plant.  The photovoltaic production facility, Solar Technologies FZE, will be constructed at Dubai’s Technopark beginning next month and could begin producing cells as early as the last quarter of 2010.

Dilip Rahulan, the Chairman and CEO of Solar Technologies FZE said about solar energy, “The energy from sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to the global energy consumption for a whole year.”  His company has plans to subsequently open plants in Mexico and Bulgaria after the Dubai facility is in operation.

It’s good to see Dubai hopping in full steam on renewable energy.  In addition to the abundant natural resources of fossil fuels throughout the Arabian peninsula, the area is also obviously one of the most sunny regions on the planet, making for a potentially easy transition from an economy based on the 20th Century power sources of oil & natural gas to 21st Century solar energy.

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Adding to the list of irreparable damages left for a legacy, President Bush and his cronies are now set to open 10,000 acres of public land in eastern Utah, to allow for drilling of natural gas and oil.  The Bureau of Land Management plans to auction off the tracts of land, which border three national parks, conveniently one month before Bush leaves office, making it difficult for the next administration to reverse the plan.  According to the New York Times:

National Park Service officials say that the decision to open lands close to Arches National Park and Dinosaur National Monument and within eyeshot of Canyonlands National Park was made without the kind of consultation that had previously been routine.

This is a lasting impression we can’t afford to let Bush leave behind.

takepart by supporting the National Parks Conservation Association and help protect these natural treasures.

Related:  Inconvenient Truth of the Day

Photo: Arches National Park, NYTimes

Diesel fuel, long regarded as the dirtier, noisier, lamer gasoline, has been reborn as a more environmentally friendly energy source, and is poised to be unleashed on the US car market.   The International Herald Tribune (the New York Times in disguise for non-Americans (don’t tell France)) reports that the new diesel emits 97 percent less sulfur than those old models, and can pass emission tests in all fifty states, even the really really hippie ones California and New York.

In the next couple years, automakers will once again attempt to turn Americans on to the diesel market.   Mercedes, Audi, VW, Nissan, Ford, GM, Jeep, and so forth and so on will be introducing new diesel vehicles to the market by 2010.

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