How to hide empty region in Omega It seems that by default all regions are rendered in Omega theme because of the Debug blocks. 

&lt;aside class="grid-3 region region-sidebar-first" id="region-sidebar-first"&gt;
  &lt;div class="region-inner region-sidebar-first-inner"&gt;
    &lt;div class="alpha-debug-block"&gt;&lt;h2&gt;Sidebar First&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is a debugging block&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;/div&gt;  
  &lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/aside&gt;


Is there a way to have an option to debug blocks and hide empty blocks at the same time?
Go to admin/appearance/settings/your_subtheme_name. Check attached image. You can set rights on who is or isn't allowed to see debugging stuff.

Uncheck debugging options will hide empty blocks...