Israel’s New Gov’t Goes Greener Than Predecessor With Ambitious Environmental Agenda

Israel's new government announced several steps designed to limit Israel's part in global warming over the next ten years. 

Action to limit Israel's polluting industries, along with initiatives to preserve nature, are among the steps the government plans to take.

These announcements came as a surprise because the parties that form the new Knesset did not run on an environment-focused platform.

Eco-focused groups were pleasantly surprised by the announcement, explaining that if these goals are achieved, the right will position itself as the biggest and most powerful environmental force in Israel given past governments’ failures to fulfill climate promises. This particular government is promising much more than its predecessors, some of whom were much more openly interested in environmental issues.

Previous governments committed to doing much less to protect the environment and reverse climate change than the current government, which has many eco-warriors in Israel eager to see action taken to fulfill these promises.

Read more about it here.

Off to ring in a green new year; till next time!

J

Israel And Jordan Agree To Team Up To Save Jordan River

 

One big thing that happened at the recent UN climate conference is that Israel and Jordan signed a letter of intent to conserve and protect the Jordan River that both countries share.

An ancient, sacred waterway that's mentioned in the bible, the Jordan River is running dry, due to climate change, pollution, and other threats. 

The agreement was signed in Egypt, where world leaders met to discuss challenges caused by climate change.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace accord in 1994. The agreement featured water cooperation as an important aspect of peace between the two neighbors, whose chilly relations have precluded any serious collaborative addressing of the thirsty river.

The plan doesn't delve deeply into details, but it's a solid start. 

And the expectation is that it will include better wastewater management, improved pollution treatment, and job opportunities for citizens of both nations.

Read more about it here. 

Off to help clean up our local beach; till next time!

J

Israeli Scientists Make Breakthrough on Producing ‘Green’ Hydrogen Fuel

One can split an atomic nucleus to produce energy, but can you also split water to create environment-friendly hydrogen fuel? Doing so currently has major drawbacks: it is both time and energy intensive.

But now, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have taken a different path. They have identified new pathways that would speed up the catalytic process and reduce the required electrical energy costs significantly.

Their splitting process is assisted by solar energy, which is known scientifically by the term photoelectrochemistry, and lowers the amount of the invested electrical energy needed to break the chemical bonds in the water molecule to generate hydrogen and oxygen. 

Oxygen evolution – the process of generating molecular oxygen (O2) by a chemical reaction, usually from water – requires the transfer of four electrons to create one oxygen molecule and then the addition of two hydrogen molecules to make water.

Oxygen evolution from water is carried out via oxygenic photosynthesis, which involves the electrolysis of water and the thermal decomposition of various oxides. This biological process supports aerobic life. When relatively pure oxygen is required industrially, it is isolated by distillation of liquefied air.

According to the current model, those electrons move one after the other in a sequence of four steps on an atomic reaction site that make the chemical reaction energetically difficult.

However, Israeli scientists showed – both theoretically and experimentally – a new paradigm where two electrons can simultaneously be transferred at different reaction sites, reducing the energy barriers for oxygen evolution. 

Their findings were published in the top peer-reviewed journal in the field of sustainability, Energy & Environmental Science.

This new research changes the common understanding within the scientific community about the catalytic mechanism for oxygen evolution – a central and important reaction that represents a bottleneck in producing hydrogen from water. The authors hope that their work will lead to additional breakthroughs in the development of new materials and new processes to create clean fuels from renewable resources.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Israeli Environmental Activism Ahead of Elections

Tel Aviv Museum of Art was packed with thousands of Israelis, eager to participate in a climate march.

Organized by several Israeli environmental groups, this march has been conducted every year since 2015. The first year it was held, only 500 people showed up. Last year, organizers reported 10,000 participants. And this year? A whopping 15,000!

People call it the most important, urgent, and largest march held in Israel.

According to Green Course CEO Elad Hochman, one of the greatest achievements of the march was having (then) prime minister Naftali Bennet declare net zero emissions by the year 2050.

This year, they're having the march before elections, by design, to show politicians the importance of this topic to the Israeli electorate.

Marchers feel that Israeli politicians see environmental issues as being less pressing than security.

But the truth is that 44% of Israelis see the environment as their main issue when it comes to voting.

Some politicians even showed up to participate in the march.

Environmental marches have become quite commonplace in the world, with some activists readily engaging in destruction, in order to make their point.

In Israel, marchers are quick to point out that their goal is disruption, NOT destruction.

Read more about it here.

Off to plant a little garden of my own, till next time!

J

Israeli "Cow’s Milk Without Cows" Start-up Raises $13m in Seed Funding

“Cow’s milk without cows” is coming to the Israeli market by 2023, after a start-up raised a record $13m from investors. Just as the name implies, it will make traditional dairy without squeezing any udders or impregnating any cows. Its products are from microorganisms.

The Tel Aviv-based Imagindairy says the milk it produced would be identical to cow’s milk, but the cow, and her associated methane, would be replaced by fungi or other plant microorganisms programmed to produce milk proteins.

This process involves inserting DNA instructions for the production of whey and casein, the principal milk proteins, into the microorganisms. To turn the whey and casein proteins produced by the microorganisms into cow-free milk and dairy, Imagindairy will add plant-based fat, sugar, and water.

Methane-free cow’s milk will likely reduce the impact of climate change and deforestation significantly. The livestock rearing industry is responsible for about 32% of human-generated methane, mainly from the planet’s billion-plus cattle. Cutting methane emissions is thought to be the strongest lever available to slow climate heating over the next 25 years.

There are already huge numbers of alternative milk types on the market, and recent years have seen massive expansions in demand for oat milk, soy milk, almond milk, and other varieties, which make “milk” from other substitutes. But none of them can quite replace the taste of cows' milk for a milk-loving palate.

Agriculture companies working to produce animal-free fish, meat, and dairy substitutes have struggled to operate on a commercial scale. Imagindairy has developed a simpler way to isolate the milk proteins from the microorganisms that allows to scale up production much easier.

Imagindairy’s milk only requires 10% of the water needed to produce traditional cow’s milk and 1% of the land. The 1% includes the land needed to produce carbon and nitrogen sources to feed the microorganisms.

This could be a total game-changer; read more about it here.

Off to enjoy a glass of (almond) milk, till next time!

J