Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz announces that the targets for renewable energy by 2030 are officially being raised from 17 percent to 30%.
This means that over the coming decade, solar installations will be built to produce the equivalent of all the electricity produced today, he says on Facebook.
Steinitz, who is beginning his second stint as energy minister, says, without explaining how the figures are reached, that “the environmental significance is the replacement of coal and pollutants with solar energy and natural gas, which will lead to a 93% reduction in air pollution, and a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per capita.”
The platform of the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea pictured from the northern beach of Dor on December 31, 2019. (Jack Guez/AFP)
Israel has recently become an exporter in natural gas, though it pumps out the un-renewable kind found in the deep sea bed, and not renewable biomethane gas.
The minister has come under heavy pressure to increase the 17% renewable energy target set within the framework of the Paris Accords, as well as criticism for portraying natural gas — something for which he advocates strongly as well — as clean, given that it is also a fossil fuel which is polluting, although to a lesser extent than coal.
— Sue Surkes
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