Israel Announces Plan to Reach 20% Renewable Energy Generation by 2025

The Israeli Government has come up with an ambitious energy plan whereby it wants to double down on its solar capacity by the middle of this decade. This is aimed at producing Israel’s 30 per cent of the energy needs from renewable sources. According to the new plan, the remaining 70 per cent will be sourced from natural gas. The energy storage infrastructure will also be enhanced. A considerable thrust will be on the solar power.

Israel’s potential calculated for the solar panel installations is kept at 26 GW. Of this, 24 GW could be developed on parking lots, facades, parking lots, water bodies and industrial facilities. The government says that 2GW could also be developed in the agricultural fields.

The record of Israel in RE production is not good. At present, the total renewable energy in the mix is just 7 per cent. Solar power alone accounts for 6 per cent of the country’s energy production. The new plan is expected to increase mainly the solar power generation.

At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Environment of Israel had announced that the country will have 40% renewables in its energy basket and it will add between 18 GW – 23 GW by the end of this decade. The government also said that an addition of 5.5 GW of energy storage capacity will also be done.

Ahead of the Glasgow Conference of Parties (COP-26) last year, Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett had announced that Israel will reach Net-Zero emissions target by 2050. The Ministry of Energy, Israel, says that today 90 per cent of the renewable energy is based on solar power. It also says that scarcity of land would imply that there needs multi-layered use of land and surfaces. For the success of the 2030 plan, the government is working to remove bureaucratic barriers in the RE sector and forge inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral collaborations.

The government had created five inter-ministerial teams that worked on formulating plans on increasing solar energy production in built-up areas, municipalities, agri-voltaic solar panels, governmental buildings and tenders, and the defense ministry and industry.