Israel lacks land to facilitate its renewable energy goals, says Siemens Israel GM

Israel’s goal to shift 30% of its power production to renewable energy sources by 2030 is very ambitious and challenging, according to Ariel Porat, general manager of Siemens Israel. Porat spoke Monday at a panel hosted by Calcalist reporter Hagar Ravet as part of Calcalist’s online conference on sustainability and innovation.

Less than 10% of the electricity being produced in Israel comes from renewable energy sources, Porat said. Renewable energy in Israel is mostly produced by photovoltaic (PV) cells, which take the sun's energy and produce electricity, he said.

One aspect that would make it difficult for Israel to reach its 30% goal, Porat said, is its limited land. “Israel is a small country, as we all know,” he said, “and size does matter in that sense, as we don't have a lot of areas to put the PV cells.” Porat suggested the Negev desert area in Israel’s south as a possible solution, but that would raise other concerns.

“We know that the majority of the population is in central Israel and this means that the electricity actually needs to be in the center,” Porat said. “So, we have another issue, of transmitting power from the south to the center,” he said. “This means that our grid needs to be very robust, very reliable so that we don't have power shutdowns. So, this is another challenge that we are facing, and in order to do this, we need to also stabilize the grid all the time, which needs to be done by rotating equipment, such as turbines, so, we cannot reach 100% PV cell production.”

On a global level, one of the main challenges is the ability to convert renewable energy into different formats to then be transferred or transported into the regions that need it, Kristin Rickert, innovation portfolio director at London-listed chemical company Johnson Matthey PLC, said.

“Another challenge,” Rickert said, “is that different regions have different policies and different approaches to the pricing or the treatment of carbon which means that the economic viability of different technologies is different in different global regions and being able to find the right economic viability in the different regions is increasingly important.”

Alexandre Perra, director of innovation strategy and corporate responsibility at French multinational power utility company Électricité de France SA (EDF), thinks achieving zero emissions by 2050 in France and other countries is possible.

“We have a strong involvement in developing renewables,” Perra said, “we invest 1 billion euros a year in renewables to get production up to 50 gigawatts, with our starting point being 23 gigawatts-24 gigawatts all over the world. We are also rebalancing, in France, the mix between nuclear power—we operate a large fleet of nuclear reactors, which is the biggest in the world—and renewable energy to achieve a 50-50 balance.”