Solar cells

The first traditional London telephone box to be transformed into a solar-powered mobile phone charger for use by the public, is pictured in central London (AFP PHOTO/CARL COURT)

Combining the two most ubiquitous parts of life in the UAE could help scientific progress

As today’s Frontiers story on the difficulty and progress in capturing sunlight points out, for all the energy resources of the UAE, the most abundant resource is still the sun – and it remains unexploited. At the same time, the other thing about the UAE that most people quickly realise is our love affair with our mobile phones.

In the spirit of scientific progress, then, The National proposes merging these two into a seamless whole: why not, we wonder, have solar-powered mobile recharging stations?

Admittedly, the idea is not new. Mobile phone charging stations already exist in Japanese cities and, more recently, in Britain’s capital, where they are solar powered. But London, as everyone who has recently returned from a “scorching” summer in the grey capital can testify, rarely has sun.

These stations wouldn’t need to be placed everywhere – some malls already have similar stations – but public spaces such as parks and beaches would be natural homes. Then, just while you are soaking the sun, the sun can be giving your mobile phone some juice.