By Eitan Barak ~
Over the Negev desert line, solar panels glint in the sunlight like lakes silently transforming light to life. Tel Aviv and Haifa laboratory cubicles are the epicenter of young engineers whizzing by models purifying air, purifying water, and fueling cars on wasted food. Galilee wasteland is where reforestation rebirths life in barren hills.
Half the size of Israel, New Jersey, but far more than it is equaling its weight in global green revolution elsewhere. It could be clean energy or climate tech or conservation of biodiversity, a green revolution is quietly but with incredibly powerful impact changing its economy as well as the ecosystem.
From Scarcity to Sustainability
Israel’s route to eco-innovation was a survival route, not a prosperity route. It was resource-poor and desert and therefore simply could not have done anything except innovate. Ten years ago, that deficiency had been translated into strength–i.e., its innovative use of alternative power sources.
Israel is a global solar power leader with over 10% of electricity from solar being the OECD’s highest. This planned future Ashalim solar thermal power plant in the Negev desert is a field of intent and innovation. Israel made its pledge of 30% of electricity by 2030 from renewables on IEA.org.
Israeli companies such as SolarEdge, the world’s leading smart energy solution companies, are exporting Israeli know-how to the roofs and solar farms of the entire world. Their inverters are peak power and used most widely in over 130 nations in the entire world today. SolarEdge is one of the best performing Israeli cleantech firms with market capitalization in billions of dollars.
Startups Driving the Climate Agenda
Same revolution that made Israel a “Startup Nation” is driving a climate tech startup revolution. Clean agriculture to carbon capture, Israeli startups are fighting the climate crisis with innovation.
One such reputation builder is HomeBiogas, which pioneered mini-scale biodigesters that are utilized to harvest kitchen waste and generate cooking fuel as well as liquid fertilizer. It has been applied in more than 100 nations and saves greenhouse gases from landfill space as well as makes human beings energy self-sufficient, especially for rural villages far away from cities. HomeBiogas already partnered with UN agencies for unit installations in refugee camps as well as rural villages.
And BreezoMeter, the Israeli Haifa-based start-up leveraging artificial intelligence and big data to deliver real-time air quality. Google in 2022 licensed its AI to allow forecasting air pollution on tens of millions of global mobile consumers. BreezoMeter is merely one of a climate barrage of start-ups from Israel to be conquering the world—at breakneck pace.
Nature in the Balance
Even as its urban centers expand and its high-tech industry booms, Israel has not forgotten the balance of mankind. Along the coast at Eilat, to name but one example, from nature reserves to forest protection of Carmel Mountains’ woods, SPNI activities express a strong national environmental ethic.
“We’re not just innovating for ourselves,” says Tamar Zandberg, former Minister of Environmental Protection. “We’re innovating for a global future.”
From Local Vision to Global Impact
Most remarkable about Israel’s green revolution, however, is that it has export potential. Its desert, city, lab triumph is being exported to Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America today. Israeli drip irrigation, the water-starved secret, has awakened millions in the desert.
It’s an old-climate challenge with a demand for visionary know-how—scalable, feasible solutions are required. And on that, Israel’s a giant, a smart one.
And as the world itself teeters unsteadily along history’s most calamitous environmental catastrophes, the business, energy, and ability to adapt of Israel are a model to other countries—and a model that they are powerless to resist.
