Israel raises its renewables sights

Government is now in a race to meet newly ambitious clean energy targets

The Israeli government unveiled a 24-strong shortlist of developers for the country’s largest-ever solar power plant—a 300MW photovoltaic (PV) facility near Dimona, in the northeast of the vast Negev desert—this month. Alongside two debut 'solar-plus-storage' auctions, the landmark project’s announcement last year took the PV capacity tendered in 2020 to over 1GW. In a period otherwise marked by a sharp economic slowdown, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, it was clear evidence of a step-change in the country’s commitment to clean energy. Last June, the Energy Ministry formally signalled the shift by espousing a new and far more-ambitious target to generate 30pc—rather than 17pc—of elect