Solar expert to shine for shule
Israeli solar power pioneer Yosef "Yossi" Abramowitz has charted a life journey from teaching values to living them.
ISRAELI solar power pioneer Yosef “Yossi” Abramowitz has charted a life journey from teaching values to living them.
The noted educator, who campaigned for Jews to be freed from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia and Yemen, is now using Israeli knowhow to power up some of the poorest regions of Africa.
Abramowitz, set to visit Australia as the keynote speaker at Caulfield Shule’s Yom Ha’atzmaut breakfast, was last here 30 years ago as the chair of the World Union of Jewish Students.
The American-born entrepreneur, a father of five and married to Rabbi Susan Silverman, spent part of his childhood in Israel.
He made aliyah 12 years ago and became a developer of solar power in Israel’s south through the iconic Arava Power Company.
He later helped develop Energiya Global Capital, introducing solar power to impoverished areas of Africa.
Speaking to The AJN from Israel, Abramowitz, who CNN billed as “Captain Sunshine”, said when he was developing solar power in the Negev, “it just felt that I went from the teaching of values to the living of values”.
The pioneer recalled, “We had to fight and win a hundred political, regulatory and statutory battles in Israel” and face off against fossil-fuel lobbyists after Israel’s natural gas discoveries last decade.
Asked about arguments in Australia that only fossil fuels can guarantee reliable baseload power, Abramowitz characterised that as “conventional wisdom”.
In Israel’s south, whose climate is similar to many parts of Australia, solar power has proven as reliable as fossil fuels “more than 99 per cent of the time”, he said.
Solar now supplies 70 per cent of the Arava’s energy needs and he expects that to be 100 per cent by 2020.
In sub-Sahara Africa, 600 million people have no electricity and at least 200 million have electricity sourced from burning diesel, an “expensive and evil” pollutant.
Abramowitz and his team launched the first commercial-scale solar field in sub-Sahara Africa, which today supplies six per cent of Rwanda’s power, and they are working in 10 additional African countries.
Now that Israel has joined the US government’s Power Africa program, it can use the superpower’s diplomatic footprint to reach a far wider field.
Honoured to be visiting Australia to represent his “small and spunky nation” on its 70th Yom Ha’atzmaut, Abramowitz envisioned that “by the time the 80th Independence Day comes around, we will have achieved full tikkun olam superpower status”.
Yossi Abramowitz will address Caulfield Shule’s Yom Ha’atzmaut Breakfast on Sunday, April 29, 9.45 am, at Palladium at Crown. Bookings, www.caulfieldshule.com.au
PETER KOHN
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