How Israel’s Military Secrets Translate To Clean Technology
Since its founding in 1917, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (the JTA), has been a leading international journalistic source for communicating news and projects dealing with the world-wide Jewish community. Many JTA news articles have dealt with various developments in Israel and the Middle East, including those which are beneficial to the cause of peace.
A recent JTA article on clean technology, published on October 1 by Dina Kraft (also a New York Times reporter), takes a good look at a number of projects by Israeli clean tech industries and Israel’s military branches in the realm of renewable and alternative energy.
“Beating swords into green plowshares in Israel,” the article talks about solar energy energy companies such as Bright Source Energy Inc, which is involved in building solar energy plants in California’s Mojave Desert and other locations; and Rotem, which utilizes technologies developed in Israel’s aeronautical defense industry.
Rotem (read more about their work with the solar power company Aora here) is working on a number of commercial renewable energy projects involving solar and wind power, hydrogen fuel power, and biofuels.
Some of Rotem’s many projects involving the environment and renewable energy are a hydrogen storage research center, a center for geology and hydrology applied research, a center for environmental sciences, and a thermal solar energy applications technology center.
The Bright Source solar energy plants in California, and a wind turbine “farm” located near Kibbutz Ein Zivan on the Golan Heights (pictured above and below), are utilizing technology that formerly was used in developing and manufacturing rotor blades for military helicopters.
Israel’s Aircraft Industries (IAI) is now involved in developing technology to produce “cleaner and greener” commercial aircraft that will be able taxi on the runways of commercial airports without using their jet engines, according to Kraft’s article.
This will not only be more environmentally friendly, but will result in a big fuel savings as well.
In the automotive sector, an Israeli company, Better Place, is working on more efficient batteries for electric cars, and has now entered into joint ventures with automobile companies Renault and Nissan. The technology used in developing these batteries is derived from the aerospace industry.
Mr. Meni Maor, vice president for development at Rotem commented that these kinds of projects have resulted from a need to both preserve the environment as well as due to the increasing cost of oil.
“We definitely leverage a lot of know-how in a variety of disciplines — including materials, chemistry, thermal dynamics — accumulated from our experience with military and homeland security technology for developing renewable energy technologies,” said Meni Maor to the JTA.
Former IDF military officers, including retired General Yom-Tov Samina, are involved in many of these projects, putting knowledge learned during their military careers into raising funds for these development projects as well as being involved directly in the projects themselves. An example of their direct involvement is former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplansky, who is now holding the position of CEO of Better Place’s Israel operations.
The former military generals are very enthusiastic about their new careers and are happy to be making their contribution to preserving the environment. “Our training involving the importance of learning how to follow through on a mission has contributed to being successful in these new projects,” a former intelligence unit head was quoted as saying.
This article was written by Maurice Picow, who blogs at Green Prophet www.greenprophet.com. Follow Green Prophet on Twitter: @greenprophet. These pictures of Israeli wind turbines were taken by Karin on a recent trip to the Golan Heights.
::JTA clean technology article
4 Trade Secrets For Clean Tech Entrepreneurs In Israel
A plucky little country, is how the late Princess Diana once described Israel to Shimon Peres. About the size of New Jersey, Israel has a disproportionate number of clean tech companies and investment in clean technology compared to its size. And now businessman and investor David Anthony from 21Ventures in the US is about to reveal his trade secrets and insider information about clean tech investing in Israel. If you are itching to become a clean tech entrepreneur in Israel, this is must-read information. If you’d like to know more about what makes the industry tick, read on.
Unlike Silicon Valley and the high-tech industry, the clean tech market today has no center of excellence, Anthony tells Green Prophet. In the last 50 years of venture capital investing there has been a saying: Never fly over your company –– meaning one shouldn’t invest in a company that isn’t within a 60 mile radius of the office. But without a center for clean technology, explains Anthony, a VC fund now has to dig into new territory to find the golden investment egg. Investors need to cross borders and turn over new stones.
To help Green Prophet readers better understand what American investors are looking for, we’ve asked Anthony for some tips. Compared to any other country in the Middle East, Israel is a clear and defined leader in this market, so we’ve focused on Israel. Most of Anthony’s tips could work in other non-US locales as well.
Read more
Putting the Z5 to the Power and Emissions Test
Filed under: Environment, General, Technology
Since writing my first article on the Israeli-invented Z5, a small add on to your car’s air filter to save gas, there has been no shortage of skepticism and critics. I’d blogged about it on TreeHugger and the article was pulled due to all the negative feedback by readers who hadn’t tried it.
The public knows they are no fools: any mention of a “device” that sounds like a Cyclone Fuel Saver, FuelMAX or Water4Gas elicits a knee jerk response. How could a small cylinder added to your car’s air filter save gas, decrease pollution or give your car more power?
People want to believe that they can save up to 30% gas, and spare the environment from emissions, but does it work?
To test the company’s claims that the $208 mail-order Z5 can help the environmental cause, Green Prophet took Gal Luft from Set America Free to a garage in Israel to emissions test and power test cars before and after the Z5 installation.
Here’s what we found: Read more
Strategic Solution’s Floating Gas Pipes Could Avert Red-Dead Environmental Catastrophe
Those who have been following the Red-Dead canal proposal, and all its controversies, know that a lot is at stake. The Dead Sea is dying because natural estuaries, such as the Jordan River, Ein Gedi bottled spring water and rainwater are not making it to its shores. Politicians think that by carving a tunnel from the Red Sea all the way to the Dead Sea, Dead Sea water can be restocked easily and plentifully. Calling it the Peace Canal, they don’t consider the impact of such water as it passes through the desert landscape.
An Israeli company “Strategic Solutions” has announced a new technology that can transport seawater from the Med Sea to Dead Sea, using floating pipes filled partially with natural gas. According to the company, “this is a viable alternative to the canal/pipeline which is an ecological disaster but which has the backing of Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and World Bank. With this new technology it can be done cheaper, safer without impacting on the environment.”
Besides the vast distance, over 200 km of the Red to Dead Sea vs. 70 km Med to Dead Sea, the main obstacle is environmental. This entire route is on an earthquake fault and it is inevitable that earthquakes will cause fissures and the salt water will destroy the freshwater aquifer as well as making the soil even more salty so that agriculture will be foreclosed. The sea spray will kill wildlife and plant life.
They write Green Prophet where this post is x-posted from: “If, because of political or financial constraints, this is the only route to be considered, the only way for this to be viable is for the waterway to NOT be in canals/tunnels or pipelines on the ground, but rather the sea water must be enclosed and transported over the ground, in an aerial pipeline.
The Israeli scientists at Strategic Solutions designed a delivery system of natural gas and liquids, be it water, oil, or petroleum products. It is based on a very simple fact: natural gas is lighter than air.
Hope floats, we hope
Like with helium, fill a balloon with natural gas, it will float, the bigger the balloon, the stronger the pressure to rise. If the balloon is very tall, there will be stronger pressure to rise. If you put this very tall balloon on the side so that on one side the gas is coming in and the other end some is coming out, the middle will rise.
The fluids need to be pumped up, but travels by gradient like your drain pipes in your house. Using this aerial pipeline, natural gas can be delivered from isolated gas wells to industrial centers that need it. It can also deliver water to isolated regions that need it. It can deliver both simultaneously so that desalination can occur at point of need as there is also sufficient fuel, natural gas.
Viable energy production
Or the water falling can generate hydro-electricity and the desalination can be by one of the company’s cleantech solar desalination methods. This presents a viable alternative to the Red to Dead Sea canal/pipeline touted by Shimon Peres and backed by the World Bank, they write.
We’d love to see some illustrations of how this would work/look. And can just imagine Israeli kids using the pipes for target practice. Let’s wait and see.
Israelis like solutions that float. See Geotectura’s solar energy balloons in Solar Energy Hope Floats.
(Above illustration comes from New York-based architect Phu Hoang Office who seeks to address and solve Dead Sea issues with ‘No Man’s Land,’ a series of artificial islands that would provide recreation, tourist attractions, renewable energy, and create fresh water. Via Inhabitat)
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts