Last Monday, 24 of February, the PEARLS project’s results, obtained during the WP4 secondment of Mrs. Sofia Spyridonidou (AUTh) to SP Interface (Mrs. Hagit Ulanovsky and Mr. Daniel Madar), were presented at the Ministry of Energy, State of Israel. The secondment focuses on the development of a Sustainable Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) for Israel at National Spatial Planning Scale, in order to identify the most appropriate, sustainable, technically and economically viable solutions for realizing new RE projects (Onshore wind turbines and PV technologies) in the country. The above objective was achieved by developing an innovative methodological framework, where the following aspects were considered: (i) the relevant features of a sustainable siting analysis (i.e. social, economic, environmental, political, technical parameters), (ii) the public, local experts’ and RE planners’ opinion and (iii) the outcomes of a field investigation in the highly suitable sites.
Since the present work could efficiently support the local policy makers, an official meeting with the Ministry of Energy was organized for presenting the relevant results. In this meeting, the Head of R&D Division and Acting Chief Scientist as well as the Head of Technologies and Renewable Energies of the Ministry of Energy attended along with the following researchers of PEARLS: S. Spyridonidou (Presenter, AUTh), G. Sismani (AUTh), H. Ulanovsky (SP Interface), D. Madar (SP Interface) and N. Teschner (BGU). The presentation triggered a fruitful discussion between the participants, and the representatives of the Ministry of Energy expressed a strong interest in materializing the proposed research in the future.
