Top US experts tour Israel’s renewable energy sitesPhoto: Project Interchange
“There are a lot of similarities even though our motivations for diversifying are somewhat different,” Junquera, advisor to the president and senior vice president at the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
“Over there we are in an economic recession and we are really into reinventing ourselves to get out of the rut. And energy has become the single largest roadblock to economic development.”
A cohort of top energy experts from various parts of the United States are traveling Israel this week to explore potential collaborations with their Israeli counterparts, in a tour organized by Project Interchange, an educational arm of the American Jewish Committee.
During their time in Israel, the delegates are visiting with various energy companies and academics to learn about Israeli technologies – particularly exploring those in the cleantech and renewable energy arena, such as solar and electric vehicle innovations.
In addition to Junquera, the delegates include Mark Brownstein, chief counsel for the Energy Program at the Environmental Defense Fund; Scott N. Paul, founding executive director of Alliance for American Manufacturing; Brian Wynne, president of the Washington, DC-based Electric Drive TransportationAssociation; Stephen Walz, director of energy planning at the Northern Virginia Regional Commission; Tyler Alten, director of energy management and strategic development at Greener by Design, LLC; Kenny Esser, senior associate at Gabel Associates; and Tom Wolf, executive director at the Energy Council of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
Some stops along the way have already included Ben-Gurion Univeristy’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Sde Boker, BrightSource Energy’s Solar Thermal Development Center in Dimona and the Ashkelon water desalination plant at Ashkelon. Next door, the delegation will also be visiting the first planned future Palestinian city of Rawabi, as well as Ramallah, where they will meet the former acting director-general of the Palestinian Environment Ministry.
Meanwhile, they have also have been meeting with various experts on political and strategic issues facing Israel and are learning about the situation of the Negev Beduin population.
Junquera is very involved with the implementation of the governor of Puerto Rico’s policy on energy, which like Israel, has increasingly become to diversify the territory’s energy sources.
“We have the first large-scale photovoltaic farm coming online this July and we have two wind farms under construction, one of which should be coming online in October or November,” Junquera said.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico is also aiming to switch many of its oil-fired plants to natural gas, and has a goal of powering the territory by 15 percent renewable sources by the year 2020, Junquera explained.
He was happy to see that Israel, too, is “diversifying from oil into gas.” Junquera was particularly interested in Israel’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) offshore buoy system that the country is now developing, as Puerto Rico is doing the same thing.
He did note, however, that after seeing the brilliant desert sunlight here, he is surprised that solar energy has not been adopted more speedily.
After meeting with Prof. Pedro Berliner, director of the Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, on Wednesday morning, Junquera said he was excited to try to link the University of Puerto Rico with Ben-Gurion University for potential future collaborations. Puerto Rico at the moment has a pipeline of 1 gigawatt worth of signed solar contracts, most of which are photovoltaic and include a government-sponsored green energy farm as well as residential and commercial photovoltaic projects, according to Junquera.
“We are trying as many routes as possible, to increase distributed energy in that way,” he said.
From several thousand miles north, Stephen Walz, Northern Virginia Regional Commission’s director of energy planning, told the Post that his purpose in attending the trip was likewise “to build partnerships,” as Virginia already has many such energy collaborations with Europe and Asia. Welz was particularly interested in products that the company Amdocs was developing for consumer interactions with utility companies, as well as the work going on at Ben-Gurion University to transform liquid gas into useable energy.
“It would be great to build bridges,” Walz said of Ben-Gurion University, noting that in northern Virginia researchers are performing similar work.
Meanwhile, he said that the emerging hitech sector in northern Virginia could provide a great partner to the similar sector in Tel Aviv.
“But you can do things a little bit easier, smaller here sometimes because you have a smaller market,” Walz said. “Every place has its challenges. And Israel because of the entrepreneurial spirit here, this is a place where there will be a lot of growth of these types of products.”
From just a bit north of Walz, Wynne said he was impressed with how the electric vehicle market was beginning to emerge in Israel.
“The key to success for vehicles that plug into the grid is giving consumers a diversity of options and that’s what we saw at Better Place,” he said, noting that it is essential to have both the option of a home and outside charging system.
Crucial to the development of electric vehicles in both the United States and Israel is ridding both countries from their dependence on petroleum, according to Wynne.
“It’s really a monopoly fuel and I think there’s a better awareness here surprisingly about what the geopolitical implications of what that political dependence are,” he said.
Wynne, who served as chairman of the trip and was in part responsible for selecting the other travelers, said that he and his colleagues are “learning a great deal” while in Israel, and the experience has been “enormously valuable.”
“Israel is obviously a great microcosm of many energy challenges and there is some terrific innovation going on here that will have a big impact on the world,” he added.
=============
Please contribute to The Freeman Center's essential educational activities.
Mail check to address above or by paypal:
http://www.freeman.org/paypal.htm
Experts: Balance gas exports, domestic needsPhoto: Albatross
“There’s no question that this is an economic blessing,” said Environmental Protection Ministry director-general Alona Sheafer-Karo.
“It’s going to reduce pollution, [and] it’s going to give us money, but together with that it raises very essential questions.”
Sheafer-Karo was speaking at a panel called “A Greener Israel – A Distant Dream?” at the 2012 Presidential Conference in Jerusalem on Thursday. While exporting some quantities of gas is certainly important, more of the gas should be left at home for domestic use rather than be sold to others. This way, the country can avoid a situation like the one afflicting Argentina, which over-committed its gas export quantities and now has to import, despite its large gas reserves, Sheafer-Karo explained.
“We want to produce clean transportation here at home,” she said.
The decisions that a committee led by Energy and Water Ministry director-general Shaul Zemach on exactly how much gas to export will be absolutely critical to Israel’s environmental and economic future, according to Sheafer-Karo.
“It’s going to be a fateful decision,” she added.
Dita Bronicki, cofounder of renewable energy provider Ormat Industries, agreed with the director- general’s assessment, stressing that “we were fortunate and we found gas close to us.”
“This is going to be a terrible mistake if we are going to base ourselves on export of gas rather than using it for ourselves and our own transportation needs,” Bronicki said.
“We are a very small country with big needs,” agreed Efi Stenzler, the chairman of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund.
Lawson Freeman, commercial vice president of Eastern Mediterranean at Noble Energy, agreed that security of supply is crucial and that selling to the domestic market is always preferable, as the infrastructure required is cheaper.
However, he argued that “people will only come in and develop gas fields if you can sell the gas,” and this requires leaving a decent quantity of gas available for export. Freeman also said he had “every confidence” the economic issues associated with natural gas development in Israel would be dealt with quite responsibly in Israel.
Maintaining enough gas within Israel’s bounds is an “issue of the future generation,” and changing the mindset to prefer the long term over now, added Prof. Eran Feitelson of the Hebrew University.
An economy, he stressed, cannot be based on natural resources alone – it must be based on technological development and knowhow.
Along these lines, Israelis must internalize that a productive, stable economy will be one that is integrated with environmental c o n c e r n s , Sheafer-Karo argued.
“This is a perception that is already passé – but in Israel for some reason we haven’t gotten rid of it – that there’s a dichotomy between the economy and the environment,” she said.
“We cannot have a stable society which is a safe investment to investors without talking about the environment.”
In Israel, such a small country, there are some 1,200 development sites where pollution levels are so bad that the developers will need to invest billions of shekels in purifying these lands, Sheafer- Karo said. Unless Israel continues to pass and enforce environmental regulations, it will be in a very bad place both environmentally and economically, she explained.
Stenzler agreed that Israel – and the world – “needs a new vision,” so that the ever-increasing population on the globe can get out of a situation of environmental emergency.
“Is a green world just a dream?” Stenzler asked. “We need to erase the question marks; the future is already here. However, we are struggling for the continuation of the existence of the human race. This is the biggest challenge that we have.”
Sunday, 24 June 2012
06/21/2012 03:58
For Jorge Junquera, witnessing Israel’s energy diversification process in action in many ways mirrors the cleantech expansion currently taking off in Puerto Rico.
06/22/2012 02:20
While the large discoveries of natural gas are an “economic blessing” that can contribute enormously to Israel’s green growth path, the country must be careful with the quantities it chooses to export, experts agreed on Thursday.
Posts
