Events and Speeches
PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the Climate Conference in Britain
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Government
The 35th Government
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Publish Date
12.12.2020
Following is an excerpt of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pre-recorded speech to the 2020 Climate Ambition Summit in the UK:
"I thank Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his team for hosting this important summit. Like the UK, Israel is totally committed to a successful transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy by 2050.
We've already made crucial progress in two specific areas. In coal, we've substantially reduced our dependency. In fact, Israel is a global leader in cutting coal consumption. By 2025, that's just five years from now, barring an emergency, Israel will no longer be burning coal, any coal. In solar energy, over the last five years, we've increased our generation from 2% to some 10%. By 2030, solar energy will provide over a third of all Israel's electricity.
The challenge we still face in solar energy is storage. My government is pursuing policies that will overcome this challenge. We're fortunate to have hundreds of Israeli startups that are working on this and related issues in alternative energy. These companies have, and will receive, billions of dollars in investments. I'm convinced that Israeli scientists and Israeli entrepreneurs, with their unquenchable ingenuity, will enable us to play our part in the global solar revolution.
Cooperation in the field of solar energy is also an integral part of our new cooperation with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. So, not only is solar energy helping eliminate dependency on fossil fuels, it's helping us cement Arab-Israeli peace. And both these goals offer us a bright, clean and safe future."