Solar Power Reaches New Heights

One of the biggest challenges that stands in the way of solar energy is the large spaces needed to set up arrays of solar collectors. Now, researchers at the Technion in Haifa have come up with a way around that barrier–by making solar collection balloons! These contraptions could hover at a height of a few hundred meters and could provide as much energy as a much larger solar panel. Check out the full details of this bright idea on Reuters.

Tel Aviv Goes Dark

Last month, we brought you news that Tel Aviv was planning to take part in Earth Hour, a one-hour blackout to call attention to the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Tel Aviv event took place last night (27 March) with President Shimon Peres in attendance. It was also the first of all the worldwide events, scheduled for Saturday 29 March. Organizers moved up the Tel Aviv events because Thursday night is the end of the Israeli workweek and to avoid any conflicts with the Jewish Sabbath. For more on the events, see Ynet, Haaretz, and the Age. The pictures are pretty cool, too.

If Our Cup is Full, Then Let it Overflow

Here some news to flex our envirofinanceexportaqua muscles…

From HAARETZ:

Hi-tech Israeli water companies shoot for world market

After decades of developing water technologies aiming to “make the desert bloom”, Israel has shifted focus to selling its products abroad with a goal of doubling exports in the sector to e2 billion by 2010.

From ultra-violet light technology to purify water to a recycling system using millions of small, plastic rings to breed bacteria and break down organic waste, Israeli innovations are finding buyers abroad. If a United Nations goal of improving sanitation by 2015 is to be achieved, the global market would be worth about e10 billion a year.

Daniel Wild, senior analyst at Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), an independent asset management group managing 8.5 billion Swiss francs (e8.3 billion) in assets, said Israeli technology is leading in two main segments — irrigation and desalination — because it was one of the first countries to develop efficient technologies.

“When it comes to water scarcity, Israel had to have a closer look very early,” Wild said.

About two-thirds of Israel is desert, spurring it to become one of the world’s leaders in water recycling. Seventy-five percent of waste water in Israel is re-used, mostly for agriculture, said Oded Distell, director of international investments at the Industry and Trade Ministry.

Soon after Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared in the 1950s that the future of the Jewish state depended on “making the desert bloom”, engineer Simcha Blass teamed up with a kibbutz farming collective in the Negev desert to form Netafim, a company that introduced to the world a water-sparing process known as drip irrigation.

Continue reading If Our Cup is Full, Then Let it Overflow…

Lights Out (for Global Warming)

Think what would happen if all the lights in the photo went out. Next month, they will.
Tel Aviv municipality has joined a growing list of cities involved in Earth Hour, a one hour citywide blackout designed to call attention to the dangers of global warming. The blackout is set to begin at 8:00 P.M. on 29 March. The idea started last year in Sydney, Australia and now includes 12 cities and many corporations and individuals.
Kudos to JTA for bringing this to our attention.

Israel’s MASHAV Helps Save the World

Thought Angelina and Oprah were the only ones saving the world?

Check out our latest video about MASHAV - Israel’s Centre for International Cooperation, which has trained more than 200,000 people from 140 countries in agriculture, public health and medical programs, community development, integrated rural regional development and other areas.

Way to go!

Israel’s Big Plan for Electric Cars by 2011

Israel plans to go electric by 2011. For the first time in history, we’ll see recharging stations and battery-exchange points to make electric cars practical on a mass scale. TIME magazine calls Israel’s new plan “far more sophisticated than anything that precedes it.” Now all we need are the matching futuristic jumpsuits.

From Time:

The Israeli government announced a major initiative to push the nation’s drivers toward electric cars on Monday, a move meant to both lessen dependence on foreign oil and address the environmental and health hazards of gas-burning vehicles.

It is not the first time a government has tried to promote electric cars on a mass scale. A 1990 California mandate requiring automakers to sell zero-emissions vehicles famously flopped. But the Israeli attempt is far more sophisticated than anything that precedes it. It aligns policy makers and a major car company with an outfit prepared to build hundreds of thousands of electric charging stations across the country. In an interview with TIME, Israeli President Shimon Peres called the project, “an experimental lab, a pilot project, before it’s applied to other, bigger industrialized nations.”

Automaker Renault-Nissan will manufacture the cars and Better Place, a California start-up founded by former SAP executive Shai Agassi, will build the infrastructure, which may eventually consist of 500,000 charging points and up to 200 battery-exchange stations. A pilot involving a few dozen cars will start later this year in Tel Aviv. A few hundred vehicles are expected to be on the road by 2009, with production scaled to the mass market by 2011. On Jan. 13, Israel slashed the tax rate on cars powered by electricity to 10% in order to encourage consumers to buy the vehicles once they are available.

Read full story here.

Watch a video from JerusalemOnline about Israel entrepreneur Shai Agasi and his electric car revolution.

Israel Goes Hybrid

Official Missions throughout North America Switch to Hybrid-Electric Cars

New York – Israel has officially gone green. Today, the Consulate General offices in New York, and the Israeli mission to the UN in New York have switched their official diplomatic vehicles to hybrid-electric vehicles significantly reducing petroleum consumption.

Israel is the first foreign country to take this green action in North America and hopes to set a new standard for all diplomatic missions in North America. This is the one of the first steps towards switching all of Israel’s official missions in the United States to hybrid-electric vehicles.

“Israel is a world leader in developing green technologies and today we took a small step to do our part to fight global warming,” says Ambassador Asaf Shariv, Consul General of Israel in NY.

Israel plans to continually strengthen energy cooperation with the U.S. by developing alternative energy technologies and assisting American efforts to reduce petroleum dependence.

To learn more about Israel’s efforts to reduce petroleum dependence, please visit the Ministry of Environmental Protections website.

Israeli to Green Auto Industry

This is a great story about a young Israeli Silicon Valley hot-shot who, according to the Wall Street Journal, has started a company that hopes to create peace in the Middle East and fight climate change at the same time by making electric cars easy to use and easy to buy; therefore eliminating carbon emissions from cars and our dependency on fossil fuels from regimes not interested in peace. Pretty bold I think.

From the NYT:

Reimagining the Automobile Industry by Selling the Electricity
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28 — Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist who was in competition to become chief executive of SAP, one of the world’s largest software companies, has re-emerged with a grand plan to reinvent the world’s automobile industry around battery-powered all-electric cars.

Others are developing green cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt. However, Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging stations in the United States, Europe and the developing world.

The new system will sell electric fuel on a subscription basis and will subsidize vehicle costs through leases and credits.

“We’re basically saying this is just like the cellular phone model,” he said. “If you think of Tesla as the iPhone, we’re AT&T.”

Continue reading Israeli to Green Auto Industry…

Sarah Silverman for the Arava Institute

I actually attended the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies for a year down at Kibbutz Ketura. Probably the greatest year of my life. It is by far one of the coolest schools in the world. We studied Desert Ecology by tracking animals and identifying plants, Archaeology by excavating ancient sites, Marine Ecology by diving on the reefs in Eilat every Tuesday for 9 months, and being the ultimate Kibbutnik by just hanging out on the Kibbutz. Definitely glad Silverman’s helping to raise the awareness.

From the JPOST:

Comic Sarah Silverman is serious about the Arava

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nathan burstein , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 25, 2007

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Talk to God and her brother-in-law, and you’ll hear very different appraisals of the kind of person Sarah Silverman is.

“You,” the Almighty says in the first episode of Silverman’s hit TV show, “are the most selfish, racist, manipulative, pompous human being alive today.”

Her brother-in-law, meanwhile, calls her a “mensch.”

The evidence appears to be on the side of her brother-in-law this fall, with the star of Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program set to headline a fund-raiser next month for the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, the ecological and coexistence center located at Kibbutz Ketura, near Eilat.

Continue reading Sarah Silverman for the Arava Institute…

What a Dump?

This is awesome. Israel’s so green we chill out in the garbage dump. In fact, Israel’s largest dump is being converted into a recycled park. Hey we’re just doing our part to keep it cool.

From the NYT:

October 24, 2007
Hiriya Journal
Recycling in Israel, Not Just Trash, but the Whole Dump
By ISABEL KERSHNER

HIRIYA, Israel — It is rare in Israel for leaders to have a site named for them while they are still alive. It is more bizarre for the object of dedication to be a colossal garbage dump, for decades the country’s most conspicuous — and smelliest — eyesore.

But on Oct. 28, in the hazy light of afternoon, Israel’s president, prime minister, senior politicians, mayors and business leaders plan to gather on this flat-topped brown mound, known as Hiriya, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, just by Ben-Gurion International Airport, and name it the Ariel Sharon Park.

This is an unusual yet fitting honor for Mr. Sharon, the iconoclastic soldier and statesman, farmer and former prime minister who suffered a crippling stroke in January 2006. Mr. Sharon, known familiarly as the Bulldozer, still lies in a coma in a hospital just visible from the top of the dump.

Ensuring that Hiriya and the flat flood lands around it would be reclaimed as open green space for the residents of southern Tel Aviv, rather than falling into the hands of eager real estate developers, was one of the last and lesser known battles fought by Mr. Sharon. “It was very important to him that they wouldn’t build there,” said Omri Sharon, his older son. “It was very close to his heart.”

Continue reading What a Dump?…