NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

MENA is the most water-stressed region in the world.

The top sixteen countries in the world facing shortages of renewable water supplies are those between Morocco and Oman, according to 2011 data from risk advisory firm MapleCroft.

Crises have already hit Egypt, Oman and Jordan this year and Lebanon is feeling the pinch, despite torrential Autumnal rain, as both private tanks and municipal services run dry.

Into this breach steps William Janssen.

The dutch entrepreneur left the rain-soaked Netherlands for the UAE for a project management job. He ended up staying and founding Desolenator in 2012, a startup with a new design of solar desalination device that produces potable water in arid countries.

“A lot of people don’t know that solar panels are not very efficient. In places like Abu Dhabi… it gets so hot you can literally fry an egg. It just gets too hot [for panels to function at their most optimal level],” he told Wamda.

The logical conclusion was to use the heat from the panel to boil water while it generated electricity.