The Heschel Center is changing Israel’s energy economy, helping local authorities leverage half a billion shekels for installing solar panels, and helping Israel reach ever more ambitious goals of renewable energy development.
In December 2019, the Ministry of Energy, the Center for Local Government and Israel Lottery collaborated on a joint initiative to provide support for local authorities to undertake installation of solar panels on rooftops of public buildings in their jurisdictions. As part of the bid, the authorities receive low-interest credit from the Israel Lottery in order to undertake the project, and supervision and consultation from the Ministry of Energy in order to successfully implement it. To provide this professional supervision and consultation, the Heschel Center, supported by the UJA Federation of New York and the Good Energy Initiative (founded by Heschel alum, Eyal Biger) are bringing this project to fruition.
This initiative is supporting the larger strategy of the Ministry to raise their goal for renewable energies from 17% to 30% of national energy production by 2030. 141 local and regional authorities applied for the credit offered by the Israel Lottery.
This is an unprecedented achievement and a game changer on a national scale.
The types of support provided are varied and include informational webinars regarding the overall process, helping the participants through the bureaucratic requirements of registration and documentation, information regarding selection of professional contractors and consultants, and both individual and general assistance.
The impressive success of this model can be seen in the jump from the initial concept, which was designed to support 12 authorities, in an overall credit loans of 100,000,000 NIS. Today we are working with 90 authorities (and working to identify more), while the credit opportunity has grown to 500,000,000 NIS.