BIRMINGHAM, 31 May 2005 — The visit by the Saudi delegation to “et2005” — the national environment technology exhibition in Birmingham, England — should provide positive results for Saudi Arabia according to the delegation’s leader, Omar Saeed from the UK Trade and Industry section at the British Consulate in Jeddah.
The Saudi delegation spent three days examining new technologies and conducting one-on-one interviews with leaders in developing and established technologies represented at the exhibition. The delegation — by far the largest in a group that included Thailand, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico — left armed with productive ideas and information and left behind a number of invitations to UK companies to visit the Kingdom and further develop ideas.
Khaled Al-Hajery, chief environmental officer of the Environmental Control Department for the Royal Commission in Yanbu, was very upbeat about the experience.
“We were particularly interested in the environmentally friendly way of excavating for our planned development along the seashore in Yanbu,” he said. “Education and environmental training was high in our list of priorities and we made contact with and are talking to Woodland Grange about training programs that we could apply in the Kingdom.”
Woodland Grange is a UK leader in developing health, safety and environment training programs and has recently started a specialist unit to provide rapid solutions to overseas training needs.
Environmental technology is a rapidly developing field, especially in Europe where some of the world’s toughest regulations are in place. Many of the solutions offered to visitors were based on established technology on the downstream side — clearing up pollution or installing pre-emptive methods in industrial processes.
“Equally important,” said Peter Wilson Director of WSP Environmental, a consultative group advising on environmental impact, legislation and industrial efficiency, “is complying with current and potential legislation in a cost-effective way. Doing that can save money — either in lawsuits or encouraging compliant companies to produce with maximum efficiency.”
He said in a presentation to the delegation that the single most powerful piece of legislation in the world today is the “Equator Principle.”
Banks and financial institutions who finance major projects screen applicants according to the guidelines laid down by the Equator Principles Secretariat for their acceptability based on whether or not the projects will affect the environment in a significant manner.
He pointed out that the Gulf States currently produce 35 percent of the world’s oil and that over the next 20 years that will rise to 50 percent.
“The $52 trillion investment required for that,” he said, “Is beyond the means of any single nation. It will have to be externally financed and that increasingly means compliance to the rules of the major lending organizations.” He emphasized that knowledge of and compliance with those principles will materially enhance a nation’s borrowing power.
In the area of new developments and focusing on prevention of pollution rather than clean up, Aldbury Technology Limited attracted keen interest. The company invented an innovative and cheap fuel dispersion system for oil burners that reduces emissions of carbon particulates in oil-burning boilers by up to 90 percent and other noxious gases by up to 40 percent. “The response from our Saudi visitors has been extremely encouraging,” said Mike Drew, CEO. “With the wide use of heavy fuel oils in industrial processes in Saudi Arabia, the delegation seized on the positive effects the application could immediately have on smoke stack emissions.”
The company is in talks with several interested parties and is making plans for a field trial on a major fuel-burner in the Kingdom in the foreseeable future.
