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SOLAR ENERGY IN ISRAEL
Major steps in incorporation of renewable energy into the Israeli market:
- August 1998 - the Government decided "to act to advance the development of technologies for efficient usage of alternative energies and thereby reduce the dependency on imported fuel and reduce environmental pollution." An inter-departmental committee was established for the purpose of formulating administrative and legislative means for promoting the use of alternative energies, to offer projects in the field and recommend ways of combining local and foreign investors.
- November 2002 - the Government reached a decision to encourage the construction and operation of electricity plants and power stations, which operate on renewable energies by private electricity producers. In addition, this decision included targets for the volume of electricity production using renewable energies: from 2007, up to 2% of the electricity produced for consumers will be from renewable energy plants. This rate will be increased by 1% every six years, so that by 2016 electricity produced from such plants will be up to 5% of the electricity supplied to consumers.
- August 2007 - the Government reached a decision regarding removing obstructions from the energy market. The decision was, amongst other things, to for an inter-departmental team to remove obstructions from promoting projects for generating electricity using solar power, and it was determined that two solar power stations will be constructed at the Ashalim site with a capacity of 200 to 250MW.
- March 2008 - the Government decided that tenders will be published for the construction of thermo-solar power plants with a capacity of 80 to 125 Megawatts at Ashalim for stage 2; an additional tender will be published for construction of photo-voltaic power stations with a capacity of 15MW and the country will reserve itself the possibility to construct an additional photo-voltaic power plant with a capacity of 15MW.
- August 2008 - the Government decided that the planning authority together with the Ministry of National Infrastructure will promote the preparation of a national outline plan for the energy market's infrastructure (NOP 41), which will also address the field of renewable energy, including amongst other things defining conditions for location, construction and operation of projects for electricity production from the main types of renewable energy sources. The CEO of the Ministry of Environmental Protection will act to consolidate environmental guiding principles for the planning of projects in the field of renewable energy, which will, amongst other things, assist in speeding up planning procedures for projects in this field.
- January 2009 - the Government ratified the decision of the socio-economic cabinet determining a guiding target and consolidating tools to promote renewable energies, especially in the Negev and Arava areas. This decision included new targets for the volume of electricity to be produced by renewable energies, which update those of 2002.
- January 2010 - the Israeli Public Utilities Authorities (PUA) decided to regulate feed-in tariffs, standards, licensing procedures for medium sized solar facilities with a capacity larger than 50KW with a feed-in tariff of NIS 1.49. The regulation is to be in place until achieving a goal of 300MW of nationwide implementation until the end of 2017, or the completion of the quota, whichever is achieved first. It is to be understood that 10% (30MW) of this regulation will be offered to other than PV renewable energy technologies. The mentioned tariff will be reduced by 5% per anum from 2012 up to 2014. From 2014 the tariff will remain constant until the quota is exhausted.
The tariff will be distributed according to capacity quotas as described in the following chart:
| Year |
Maximum Annual Quantity |
Accumulative Quantity |
| 20010 - 2011 |
50MW |
50MW |
| 2012 |
65MW |
115MW |
| 2013 |
85MW |
200MW |
| 2014 |
100MW |
300MW |
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SOLAR ENERGY IN ISRAEL