The tentative rapprochement with Israel, initiated by Turkey’s
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Christmas Day 2020 has resulted in a major
environmental achievement. On December 9,
2022 it was announced that an agreement has been signed for the world’s
largest-ever wave power plant to be built by the Israeli company Eco Wave Power
(EWP) in the Turkish port of Ordu on the Black Sea coast. EWP, which was
founded in Tel Aviv in 2011, has developed smart and cost-efficient technology
for turning ocean waves into green electricity.
The Oren Ordu Enerji
company will assign nine potentially suitable breakwaters to EWP for a period
of 25 years, while EWP will be responsible for constructing and commissioning
power plants and selling the generated electricity in accordance with a
production quota to be determined for the site.
The
$150 million project functions by connecting an array of steel floats to an
onshore generator by way of an underwater umbilical pipeline. The floats are hinged
to piston-equipped arms that pump in time with the rise and fall of incoming
waves. The plant, which will eventually
generate 77 megawatts (MW), will be preceded by a 4MW pilot.
Inna Braverman, head of EWP said: “This landmark agreement… will allow us to provide clean electricity from Turkish waves for the very first time.”
Inna Braverman, an
Israeli entrepreneur and businesswoman, was born in Ukraine and came with her
family to Israel at the age of 3. She founded Eco Wave Power aged only 24, and
under her leadership the company installed its first grid-connected wave energy
array in Gibraltar in 2016. EWP became
the first Israeli company ever to be listed onNasdaq Stockholm. She is the
winner of the UN “Global Climate Action Award” among many others, and in June
received an honorary fellowship from the University of Haifa, her alma mater.
Unlike the other green
energy sources, namely solar and wind power, waves are not only zero-carbon but
continuous. The oceans are in constant motion. As King Canute is reputed to have discovered,
nothing can stop the sea. Unfortunately the cost of electricity generated by wave
power, currently varying between 60 cents per kilowatt hour to as much as a
dollar, is too high to be commercially viable.
However, the costs have always been predicted to fall substantially,
provided more research and development money is put into the technology. That
process now seems to be under way. Aptly, the tide is turning.
Turkey’s relationship
with Israel too, heralded by Erdogan’s press conference on December 25, 2020,
has been changing for the better. For the previous thirteen years relations
between Turkey and Israel had been – to say the least – rancorous. As
self-proclaimed champion of the Sunni Muslim world in general, and the
Palestinian cause in particular, Erdogan lost no opportunity to castigate,
censure and berate Israel. His ire was especially roused by Israel’s
incursion into Gaza in 2008 in its effort to stop Hamas firing rockets
indiscriminately into the country. It culminated in his venomous attack
on Israel’s then-president, Shimon Peres, at the Davos conference in January
2009. The Mavi Marmara affair in 2010 – categorized by Erdogan
as an armed Israeli attack on a humanitarian convoy, but about which much
remains to be explained – soured relations between Turkey and Israel for six
years. Diplomatic ties were restored only in 2016. Two years later,
in 2018, when the US recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved its
embassy there from Tel Aviv, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel, and
Israel followed suit.
All of which explains why Erdogan’s comments in
December 2020 caught the world by surprise. Among other conciliatory remarks,
he declared that “our heart desires that we can move our relations with [Israel]
to a better point.”
The reason for Erdogan’s
change of direction has remained a matter of speculation, but Middle East
watchers soon began to notice a marked decline in anti-Israel rhetoric. Then on July 13, 2021 the media reported the unexpected
news that Erdogan had phoned Israel’s newly elected president, Isaac Herzog, to
offer his congratulations. The surprise was all the greater when it
emerged that the call between the two presidents had lasted 40 minutes.
Official accounts of the
presidential conversation report the leaders agreeing on the importance of ties
between Israel and Turkey, and the great potential for cooperation in many
fields, in particular energy, tourism and technology. Diplomatic
relations, suspended in 2018, were restored later in 2021. Israel’s ambassador
to Turkey was appointed in September, to be followed by Turkey’s ambassador to
Israel in November.
This year has seen
several Israeli ministers visiting Turkey, their way led by President Herzog,
who was hosted by Erdogan in March. On November 17, as soon as it was clear
that Benjamin Netanyahu had emerged as the winner of Israel’s general election,
Erdogan was on the phone to offer his congratulations. The two are reported to
have agreed to work together to bring about “a new era” in Ankara-Jerusalem
ties.
Now comes the news of this
ambitious green energy collaboration, the largest wave power plant in the
world. The hope is that this Turco-Israeli
enterprise will lead the way to freeing the enormous potential, currently locked
up in the world’s oceans, for generating vast quantities of carbon-free,
environmentally safe electric power.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-725308
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