The Pacoche Marine Reserve in Ecuador documented 786 hundred dead bird species in the first week of June, as well as in areas that were regarded as environmental refuges occurring simultaneously with the presence of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has already killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds in the region.

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According to the Ministry of the Environment, one of the most trustworthy theories is that the "El Niño" phenomenon is the reason for "the lack of food supply" for various species, including birds. The tropical Pacific's seas are home to El Niño, the king of climatic phenomena affecting the waters of the Tropical Pacific. Its arrival, scheduled for November or December in Ecuador, means extreme warming of the oceans.

According to Luis Cumba, undersecretary of the Ministry of Environment, "There are no signs that the deaths are caused by a viral process, which affects all migratory birds." The environmental authorities have found 783 migratory bird carcasses as of the first week of June. According to Paolo Piedrahita, a research professor at the Higher Polytechnic School of the Coast, birds rely only on the fish that the seas produce for nourishment.

When the ocean, or in this case the coastline, is warmed by the incidence of El Niño, the supply of fish decreases. In addition, marine species, even with a slight variation in sea temperature, modify their behavior, affecting their predators, such as birds.

Amid the alert thousands of black cormorants are reportedly appearing on the Ecuador beaches. Most of them come from Peru, where researchers are on the alert for the presence of the coastal El Niño.
"These migrations correspond to oceanographic events related to the variation of the surface temperature of the sea," adds Piedrahita. These trips can last hours, days, or weeks, but the problem occurs when the birds cannot find food in the regions where they fly. For this reason, he warns that the massive appearance of birds is not 'normal' either, since the distribution ranges of birds are established according to where they can "reproduce and feed directly from the sea."

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The southern tip of Israel is a rocky desert where solar panels are abundant and the sun, when shining, is the source of nearly all electricity. Once it sets, however, the grid shifts back to fossil fuels to generate power.

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Renewable energy from solar and wind-powered systems cannot be stored without extra cost – a major obstacle in the world's efforts to tear itself away from polluting fuels and avoid a climate catastrophe.

But at Kibbutz Yahel – a small community not far from the Red Sea where a sweet variety of dates called Medjool is grown – residents have started using a new technology that can store solar energy cheaply and produce power well into the night.

During the day, excess energy from solar panels drives a system where water is used to condense air in underground tanks. After sundown that air is released to power a turbine and generate electricity. And the cycle repeats in the morning.

"Other kibbutzim are waiting and watching to see if this works, and certainly it could become the green energy storage solution for the area," Yossi Amiel, Yahel's business manager, said.

The system was developed by Augwind Energy, a company traded in Tel Aviv with a market cap of 1.2 billion shekels ($386 million).

Unlike above-ground platforms that work with condensed air and require significant real estate, the company says its product – a relatively thin steel tank with a special polymer lining – can be placed right at the power source and at a lower cost.

A range of techniques is being explored to store energy, like pumped-hydro systems that use gravity to generate electricity after hours, lithium-ion batteries like those in electric cars, and storing energy in chemical forms, like hydrogen.

An ideal solution has been elusive, said Gideon Friedman, acting chief scientist at the Energy Ministry. Batteries can be toxic and their cycles are limited, he said, while hydrogen is still early stage and too expensive.

Augwind's AirBattery is about 80% efficient in storing energy, a bit less than batteries, but unlike batteries, it does not degrade over time.

"It's really a matter of cost versus the competition of batteries, whether this system can compete in cost. If they can, we will see, I expect, quite a number of these. Certainly, there are a few projects already planned," Friedman said.

Augwind CEO Or Yogev said the price is on par with lithium-ion batteries, roughly $250 per kilowatt-hour, and that it will drop next year to below $200 as they roll out to more customers. The company has so far raised $60 million from institutional investors, he said.

"Over the next few years, we're going to have thousands of megawatt-hours installed using the AirBattery technology. That's our prediction," Yogev said. "Even that, when you compare that to the size of the market, it's still pretty small."

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The war for the planet amid the global warming and climate crisis, which has propelled environmental stories to the front pages of newspapers and the top of news programs, has also reached the art world.

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Israeli artist Oren Fischer recently finished a 320-square-meter (3,444 square-foot) mural titled "It's in Our Hands" in Kiryat Hamelacha in Tel Aviv as part of an international art project called "Hope through action" to mark 50 years of activity for the Greenpeace environmental organization.

Within the framework of the project, gigantic murals will appear in 12 countries around the world as a call to environmental action.

Video: Yair Zimmerman

At the center of Fischer's mural is a huge, humanized earth, with paintings depicting the complexity of its existential state through the use of humorous images and texts addressing pollution, wars, forcible takeover of resources by politicians, corrupt tycoons and more.

At the bottom of the piece are a line of people holding the world in their hands, a tribute to Atlas kneeling under the load of the universe.

Fischer himself, a resident of Tel Aviv's Shapira neighborhood, explained his work: "Painting is about taking responsibility, and understanding that people have the power to change reality with their own hands and shape the change they want to take place in the world."

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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is slated to spend the second day of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in meetings with world leaders, including a first meeting with Bahraini Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa and a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with whom Bennett spoke briefly on Monday.

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Also on Monday, Bennett met with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the summit to discuss global and regional challenges facing Israel and France, especially Iran's rapid progress in enriching uranium.

Macron and Bennett agreed to strengthen collaboration between the two countries.

Aside from the Iranian issue, Bennett and Macron discussed the NSO spyware case.

Israel has been investigating whether cyber security firm NSO Group's Pegasus software, which can hack phones and according to the company is intended for vetted law enforcement and intelligence agencies, has been abused on a global scale. The Defense Ministry oversees exports of offensive cyber tools such as Pegasus.

In July, several international media organizations reported that Pegasus was used in hacking smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists and government officials in several countries.

NSO has rejected the reports, saying they were "full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories." Pegasus was intended for use only by government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism and crime, NSO said.

Macron's phone was on a list of potential targets for surveillance using the Pegasus software by Morocco, the French newspaper Le Monde reported. Morocco has denied the allegation and said it did not possess Pegasus.

Macron has called for an investigation.

"It was agreed between the leaders that the subject will continue to be handled discreetly and professionally, and with the spirit of transparency between the two sides," an Israeli official said.

"It was agreed between the leaders that the subject will continue to be handled discreetly and professionally, and with the spirit of transparency between the two sides," the official said.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

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In international terms, it is the most important summit in the world – more than the United Nations General Assembly, and more important than a meeting between leaders of superpowers. The decisions made at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, even if they only partially materialize, will ultimately affect all of humanity and how we live.

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There is, for example, a direct connection between plastic utensils doubling in price in Israel and the issue on behalf of which 190 world leaders are currently gathered in Glasgow, Scotland. Due to global warming, reducing the use of plastic is critical. Israel must fall in line with the global norms, and – similar to every other country – also must cope with the rising costs of crude oil, from which many plastic products are made. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Israel, which is considered the second-best developer of green energy solutions in the world, will have a lot to offer the 30,000 summit attendees. From this perspective, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's mission is to step into the giant shoes of Benjamin Netanyahu and market what the Jewish state has to offer. Without a successful marketing campaign, Israel's green patents will remain on the drawing table.

Even if the official excuse for Bennett's attendance at the summit is global warming, it's clear that the central issue he will be discussing with the leaders he meets behind closed doors is Israel's "cold war" with Iran, as he referred to it on Sunday.

This time around, it is the American-Israeli side, not the Iranian side, doing the most muscle-flexing. The cyberattack that paralyzed Iranian gas stations (attributed to Israel); the multinational military exercise in Israel (which included the Jordanian and UAE air forces); escorting the American B-1 bomber flying over Israeli territory on its way to the Persian Gulf; and the interview by Maj. Gen. Tal Kelman (who holds the IDF's Iran file) to a Bahraini newspaper, in which he said that if a diplomatic resolution isn't reached, Israel and its allies will have to use force.

This succession of signals is not coincidental. It's safe to assume its purpose, at least in part, is to pressure the US no less so than Iran. With the renewal of nuclear negotiations seemingly around the corner, Israel is sending a message that it would be wise to take its interests into account. Unlike a decade ago under Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, there is no independent plan to attack Iran in the works, rather far-more moderate threats. And yet, in light of the current state of affairs vis-a-vis Iran – which the US also agrees is at a critical point – Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Bennett, and Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid are playing the game.

The world came to chilly Glasgow to stop global warming; Israel went to Glasgow to stop the cold war with Iran from heating up. Either way, Alok Sharma, the British energy minister chairing climate talks, called rising temperatures a "wake up call for all of us" that is "unequivocally" caused by human action.

Negotiators will push nations to ratchet up their efforts to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius this century compared with pre-industrial times.

The climate summit remains "our last, best hope to keep 1.5 in reach," said Sharma.

Scientists say the chances of meeting that goal are slowly slipping away. The world has already warmed by more than 1.1C and current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C by the year 2100.

The amount of energy unleashed by such planetary warming would melt much of the planet's ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, experts say.

Sharma noted that China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, had just raised its climate targets somewhat.

"But of course we expected more," Sharma told the BBC earlier Sunday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson struck a grim tone, saying G-20 leaders "inched forward" on curbing global warming, but the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) – struck in a landmark deal at the end of the 2015 Paris climate accord – was in danger of slipping out of reach.

"If Glasgow fails then the whole thing fails," Johnson told reporters in Rome.

US climate envoy John Kerry warned last week of the dramatic impacts that exceeding the 2015 Paris accord's goal will have on nature and people, but expressed optimism that the world is heading in the right direction.

"I believe we can move negotiations forward and launch a decade of ever-increasing ambition and action... but we need to hit the ground running," Sharma said, in his opening speech on Sunday.

"Six years ago, in Paris, we agreed our shared goals," he said, referring to the 2015 agreement in the French capital to keep global warming to below 2C Celsius and endeavor to reach 1.5C.

"COP26 is our last best hope to keep 1.5C in reach… If we act now and we act together we can protect our precious promise and ensure where Paris promised, Glasgow delivers," he said.

At the Vatican Sunday, Pope Francis urged the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square: "Let us pray so that the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor" is heard by summit participants.

The G-20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world's climate-damaging emissions and G-20 host Italy and Britain, which is hosting the Glasgow conference, had looked for more ambitious targets coming out of Rome.

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But major polluters including China and Russia had already made clear they had no immediate intention of following US and European pledges to zero out all fossil-fuel pollution by 2050. Russia said on Sunday that it was sticking to its target of 2060.

Speaking to reporters before leaving Rome, US President Joe Biden called it "disappointing' that G-20 members Russia and China 'basically didn't show up" with commitments to address the scourge of climate change ahead of the UN climate summit.

India, the world's third-biggest emitter, has yet to follow China, the US and the European Union in setting a target for reaching 'net zero' emissions. Negotiators are hoping India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce such a goal in Glasgow.

Some of the issues being discussed during the talks have been on the agenda for decades, including how rich countries can help poor nations tackle emissions and adapt to a hotter world. The slow pace of action has angered many environmental campaigners, who are expected to stage loud and creative protests during the summit.

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A new report by the state comptroller has outlined the government's failure in preparing for the global climate crisis.

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It has been 13 years since Israel joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and began operative actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the report states that as of 2021, there has been an increase in Israel's absolute emissions.

According to the 659-page report by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, absolute carbon emission rates have risen 103% since 1990 and 12% since 2005.

"The actions of the Israeli government and its preparation for the climate crisis" ranked Israel 10^th out of 29 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that emit the most gas per capita in 2016. This means that Israel's emission rates were the same as those of a medium-sized country.

The report continued: "The State of Israel is not prepared for the climate crisis and there has not yet been a change of perception in Israeli policy on the issues. There are substantial gaps between the perception in Israel and in the world."

This report comes days after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared the tackling of climate change as a new national security interest of Israel.

"The climate crisis is one of the major issues on the world agenda. It concerns the lives of all of us, and also the lives of our children and grandchildren. We are obligated to deal with it in Israel; it is at the core of our being."

In June, the Environmental Protection Ministry published a special report in which for the first time ever it calculated the overall monetary cost of emissions to the Israeli economy: NIS 31 billion (around $9.6 billion) annually. Within this total, the external cost of greenhouse gas emissions cost the Israeli economy NIS 11.3 billion ($3.5 billion).

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"The report presents an alarming picture and, for the first time, a price tag in shekels for air pollutants," said Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg.

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

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People in the Pacific Northwest braced for another major, multiday heat wave starting Wednesday, just over a month after record-shattering hot weather killed hundreds of the region's most vulnerable people when temperatures soared to 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius).

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In a "worst-case scenario," the temperature could reach as high as 111 F (44 C) in some parts of western Oregon by Friday before a weekend cooldown, the National Weather Service in Portland, Oregon, warned this week. It's more likely temperatures will rise above 100 F (38 C) for three consecutive days, peaking around 105 F (40.5 C) on Thursday.

Those are eye-popping numbers in a usually temperate region and would break some all-time records if the late June heat wave hadn't done so already, meteorologist Tyler Kranz said. Seattle will be cooler than Portland, with temperatures in the mid-90s, but it still has a chance to break records, and many people there, like in Oregon, don't have air conditioning.

"We'll often hear people say, 'Who cares if it's 106 or 108? It gets this hot in Arizona all the time.' Well, people in Arizona have air conditioning, and here in the Pacific Northwest, a lot of people don't," Kranz said. "You can't really compare us to the desert Southwest."

Gov. Kate Brown has declared a state of emergency over the heat and activated an emergency operations center, citing the potential for disruptions to the power grid and transportation. City and county governments are opening cooling centers and misting stations in public buildings, extending public library hours and waiving bus fare for those headed to cooling centers. A statewide help line will direct callers to the nearest cooling shelter and offer tips on how to stay safe.

The back-to-back heatwaves, coupled with a summer that's been exceptionally warm and dry overall, are pummeling a region where summer highs usually drift into the 70s or 80s. Both the heat and a historic drought across the American West reflect climate change that makes weather more extreme in the historically temperate region.

The June heat in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia killed hundreds of people and was a wake-up call. It was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, a scientific analysis found.

In Oregon, officials say at least 83 people died of heat-related illness, and the hot weather is being investigated as a possible cause in 33 more deaths. Washington state reported at least 91 heat deaths, and officials in British Columbia say hundreds of "sudden and unexpected deaths" were likely due to the soaring temperatures.

The toll exposed huge blind spots in emergency planning in a region unaccustomed to dealing with such high temperatures, said Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University.

Most of those who died in Oregon were older, homebound and socially isolated, and many were unable, or unwilling, to get to cooling centers.

The call center designed to provide information about cooling centers was unstaffed during part of the peak heat, and hundreds of callers got stuck in a voicemail menu that didn't include a prompt for heat-related help. Portland's famed light-rail train also shut down to reduce strain on the power grid, eliminating a transportation option for low-income residents seeking relief.

"We knew a week in advance. What would happen if we knew an earthquake was going to hit us a week in advance?" Shandas said. "That's the kind of thinking we need to be aligned with. We know something disastrous is coming, and we need to get all hands on deck and focus on the most vulnerable."

Yet even younger residents struggled with the heat in June and dreaded this week's sweltering temperatures.

Katherine Morgan, 27, has no air conditioning in her third-floor apartment and can't afford a window unit on the money she makes working at a bookstore and as a hostess at a brewery.

She estimated that it hit 112 F (44 C) in her apartment in June. She tried to keep cool by taking cold showers, dousing her hair with water, eating Popsicles and sitting immobile in front of a fan for hours.

Morgan, who doesn't have a car, got ill from the heat after walking 20 minutes to work when it was 106 F (41 C). She took the following two days off rather than risk it again. The heat from the sidewalk, she said, felt like it was "cooking my ankles."

This week, she'll have to walk to work Thursday, the day when temperatures could again soar just as high.

"All my friends and I knew that climate change was real, but it's getting really scary because it was gradually getting hot – and it suddenly got really hot, really fast," Morgan said. "It's eye-opening."

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Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and ministers Ayelet Shaked, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, Tamar Zandberg, Karine Elharar, Merav Michaeli and Orna Barbivay drafted the resolution, which will be presented to the government for approval at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

The resolution's approval represents Israel's implementation of its commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, joining the dozens of other countries that have already decided to move toward low-carbon economies, spearheaded by the United States, European Union member states, Canada, Japan and China.

As stated, to meet the final goals, the resolution proposes a series of targets for 2030 and 2050 respectively, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector by 96%; reducing them by 85% in the electricity sector; and reducing them by 92% in terms of municipal waste by 2050.

The Environmental Protection, Finance, Transpiration, Energy, Economy and Interior ministries have all allocated special budgets to meet the 2030 goals, including the purchase of electric buses, building additional charging stations throughout the country, investing in reducing greenhouse emissions by factories, businesses, municipalities and more.

The resolution further states that Energy Minister Karine Elharar will work to set renewable energy goals for 2050 within 12 months of the resolution's approval and establish a mechanism to ensure that the government's policies remain in line with Israel's national climate objectives and with developing an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy.

"This is a historic moment; Israel is taking a step up in the fight against the climate crisis," said Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg.

"The government's decision outlines goals for the first time, the, along with a comprehensive strategy for Israel to contend with the climate crisis that threatens our future in Israel as well as the entire planet. The objectives and the strategy we've formulated allow Israel to implement its international commitments as an OECD country and to compete and prosper in a low-carbon world," Zandberg added.

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Until recently, before NASA's Juno space probe entered its orbit around the planet Jupiter, no one knew that powerful cyclones, approximately the size of Australia, rage across its polar regions.

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Jupiter's storms, as opposed to their earthly variety, do not disperse, hardly change, and are clearly not associated with flying rooftops and damp weather reporters. In an article published Monday in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science reveal the mysteries of Jupiter's cyclones: which forces are at work fixing these gargantuan storms to their polar locations, and why their numbers and locations remain more or less constant over time.

"We can think of Jupiter as an ideal climate laboratory," says Prof. Yohai Kaspi of Weizmann's Earth and Planetary Sciences Department.

Earth is an intricate and multivariable system: it has oceans and an atmosphere, continents, biology – and of course, human activity. Jupiter, on the other hand, the largest planet in our solar system, is composed of gas and is therefore a far easier system to study, one that we can create predictions for and test hypotheses on. The data required for these predictions and hypotheses is collected by Juno – a research probe that was launched by NASA in 2011 and entered Jupiter's orbit mid-2016. Kaspi, a NASA co-investigator on the Juno mission, witnessed one of its more exciting findings: the cyclone storms swirling around the planet's poles.

"If we look at older images of Jupiter taken before 2016," says Kaspi, "we see that the poles were commonly represented as large grey areas because no one knew then what they actually look like."

The reason for that lies in the fact that the solar system is organized on the same plane, which is very close to the plane of Jupiter's equator. Therefore, past observations of the planet that were carried out from Earth, or from earlier space missions, could for the most part only capture Jupiter's lower latitudes. Hence, one of the Juno mission's noteworthy innovations is its polar orbit, which allowed researchers to observe in detail Jupiter's tumultuous poles for the first time. This is exactly how the cyclones were exposed, surprisingly organized and resembling a round tray of cinnamon rolls, along latitude 84° N and S. Moreover, data gathered from Juno's many orbits around Jupiter indicate that the number of cyclones remains fixed – eight are active around the north pole and five around the south.

"This discovery was very surprising at the time," says Kaspi, "because we expected the poles to be more or less symmetric." In a previous study, Kaspi used the lack of symmetry in Jupiter's gravitational field to determine the depth of the strong east-west wind belts that are characteristic of the planet's atmosphere.

On Earth, tropical cyclonic storms form in areas where the water temperature exceeds 26° Celsius – usually in the center of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – and they drift in a circular motion toward the poles, owing to a pull resulting from the planet's spin. On Jupiter, on the other hand, strong jet streams prevent these storms from forming below latitude 60° – only above it are the currents weak enough to allow cyclones to rage on. What causes these particular storms on Jupiter to settle at latitude 84°? According to the new study, Jupiter's cyclones are indeed attracted to the poles, but the polar storm located in the center of the ring of cyclones pushes them away, preventing them from reaching the pole itself.

"As long at the cyclones remain at a distance from the pole – they are attracted to it. But the nearer they venture – the more strongly they are repelled," says doctoral student Nimrod Gavriel from Kaspi's research group, whose thesis focuses on elucidating this phenomenon. "The question is whether the repulsion effect is strong enough to resist the pole's attraction. Latitude 84° is where these forces even up."

Gavriel and Kaspi propose a mathematical model that considers the diameter of the polar cyclone (which is larger at the south pole than in the north), the possible minimal distance between each cyclone, the surface area around latitude 84° and the size of the cyclones and their spin, and that accurately predicts the presence of eight cyclones across the north pole. As for the south pole, based on their calculations, the number of cyclones should be 5.62. This number is consistent with the data collected by Juno: in reality this number cannot exist, but the five southern storms often separate into six storms, as observed during the probe's eighteenth and thirty-fourth orbits around Jupiter. The proposed model also explains why this phenomenon is absent on Jupiter's closest neighboring planet – Saturn.

"We are trying to understand atmospheric dynamics at a large scale, and providing a successful explanation for the phenomenon of Jupiter's polar cyclones gives us the confidence that we truly know what's going on there," says Kaspi.

This confidence may be paramount for us here on Earth, since a deeper understanding of cyclones could aid meteorologists to predict, for example, how the heating up of our planet will affect the movement of storms across it – a challenge that humanity will most likely face in the near future. But Kaspi's fascination with the exploration of Jupiter is more straightforward: "There are no new islands to discover in the Pacific, and most planetary bodies in the solar system have already been mapped. The poles of Jupiter and the other gaseous planets are, perhaps, the last spots in the solar system that are still left to explore."

"We are expecting more valuable data to come in from Juno during the next couple of years," Kaspi adds, following the recent extension of the Juno Mission to 2025. "Owing to gradual changes in the spacecraft's polar orbit, it is now getting closer and closer to Jupiter's north pole, allowing us to gain information about this polar region from several specialized instruments," he concludes.

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The Environmental Protection Ministry published a special report recently in which for the first time ever it calculated the overall monetary cost of emissions to the Israeli economy: NIS 31 billion (around $9.6 billion) annually. Within this total, the external cost of greenhouse gas emissions, which dramatically impact the global climate crisis, cost the Israeli economy NIS 11.3 billion ($3.5 billion).

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The ministry's report also showed that expanding the shit toward renewable energy resources for electricity production by 40% by 2030 –a goal the ministry believes is not only attainable but imperative to accomplish – will save the Israeli economy some NIS 4.5 billion ($1.4 billion) annually in external costs. The report also indicates that increasing the transition to electric cars by 25% by 2030 will save the economy NIS 970 million ($299 million) annually.

"The report presents an alarming picture and, for the first time, a price tag in shekels for air pollutants," said Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg.

"The conclusion is that fighting the climate crisis lies at the very core of Israel's national and economic strength and needs to guide the government, planning bodies, commercial companies and environmental groups in their assessments of the broader picture of the effects that air pollution and greenhouse emissions have on us. These figures lead to the conclusion that we must raise the Israeli goal for renewable energy to 40% by 2030 and to zero [emissions] by 2050. This is an ambitious and attainable goal, which will save the Israeli economy billions every year," said Zandberg.

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