Planning board sets rules for solar panels on new houses, nonresidential buildings
Panels to be mandatory for new detached homes with roofs of 100 m² and up, nonresidential buildings with roofs of 250 m² and up; energy minister: Apartment buildings next on list
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The National Planning and Building Committee on Tuesday approved new Energy Ministry regulations requiring all new detached houses and nonresidential buildings of a certain size to install solar panels for electricity generation.
The regulations will take effect once they are published in the official gazette, which is expected within the coming weeks.
The rules will apply to detached homes with roofs of at least 100 square meters (1,076 square feet) and nonresidential buildings whose roofs exceed 250 square meters (2,690 square feet).
City engineers will be granted discretion to exempt buildings from the requirement, for example, where a building has particular architectural value or roofs have been earmarked to be built upon.
The regulations have been in the works for the past two years.
The ministry said in a statement that the move would keep some 35,000 dunams (8,650 acres) of land free of solar fields and save some of the billions of shekels needed to expand the electricity grid because energy production would closely match consumption.
Energy Minister Eli Cohen said he would work to expand the regulations to residential apartment buildings, in which the majority of Israelis live.
Among many obstacles in such blocks is that apartment owners must agree to purchase a system and establish a mechanism for distributing the earnings.
According to several recent reports, including one by the state comptroller, Israel is lagging behind its own targets to reduce global warming gas emissions.
According to the state comptroller’s report, issued in March, the government now expects to reduce emissions by 12 percent by 2030, rather than the 27% it promised the United Nations in August 2021.
It plans to generate 19% of power from renewable sources by 2030, down from an original 30%, with emissions from electricity forecast to decline by 21% rather than the planned 30% — a target that would still have put it in the bottom place among OECD countries.
The state comptroller, Matanyahu Engelman, wrote that rather than pushing ahead with renewable energy, the state spent roughly NIS 4 billion (just over $1 billion) annually to subsidize fossil fuels, with such support steadily rising.
Engelman said figures for 2022-2023 were expected to rise even further, thanks to the government’s cancellation of the coal tax and a discount on the gasoline tax. Together, these were costing the Treasury a combined NIS 3.5 billion ($950 million) per year.
