As one of the leading Smart Cities in Israel, Eilat aims to be on the cutting edge of energy innovation. The Municipality of Eilat has long been a forerunner in the Israeli renewable energy scene and we have been working together with the non-profit ‘Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy’ to make the Arava region a centre of R&D for RES technologies. By taking part as a procuring partner in the Horizon 2020 project procuRE Eilat hopes to help find a smart solution to decarbonising the building stock. This has become of increased national significance in the wake of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to commit to closing all coal stations by 2030 and increasing the share of RES energy to 30% by 2050.

We hope to see advancements towards a 100% RES retrofit package which is applicable to the majority of public buildings. This would allow a sharp increase in deep energy retrofits, an indispensable step towards reaching Israeli goals of reducing 5.9 MtCO2 of emissions in the building sector by 2030 (compared to 2016 emissions). Reducing emissions is a pressing problem as it is projected that the population in Israel will rise to 13 million people by 2040, if no changes are made electricity production is set to double. procuRE is also working towards producing 100% of energy on-site. This would reduce the reliance on grids which has long been an issue in Eilat. Eilat’s remote location has made connection to the national grid weak; reducing grid load would increase our energy independence. 

procuRE is still in the early stages of the project and is in the process of collecting input and reaching out to suppliers. Three English language OMC events will take place in June and July for interested suppliers to learn more and shape the tender.