Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participated Dec. 12 in the Climate Ambition Summit, organized by the British government. Marking five years to the Paris Climate Agreement, world leaders pledged during the online summit to fully transition by 2050 from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Some of these countries, like Sweden, set their target date even earlier.

Netanyahu had participated in the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. At the time, Israel defined rather modest goals. The country’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution stated it intended to achieve an economy-wide unconditional target of reducing its per capita greenhouse gas emissions to 7.7 ton carbon dioxide by 2030. Israel also set goals on renewable energy sources, efficient use of energy and shifting from private cars to public transportation. With that in mind, the targets set last week by Netanyahu are far more ambitious.

“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 of Israel's electricity. The challenge we still face in solar energy is storage. My government is pursuing policies that will overcome this challenge," promised Netanyahu.

Experts in Israel claim that Israel had fulfilled only partly its own 2015 targets. Some of the experts say that the target of increasing the use of renewable energy is where Israel is doing well. The government had pledged in 2015 for renewable energy sources to supply 17% of its total energy consumption by 2030. The target of 30%, and even more than that, say the experts, seems to be doable.