Israel "Globes" Business Conference To Showcase Country's Clean Tech and Water Prowess

Irrespective of the outcome of the current COP 15 climate change conference still in progress in Copenhagen, “Startup Nation” Israel is already making plans to become a world leader in clean technology ventures, especially in the areas of water, energy and environmental technologies.

Some of these projects will be topics for panel discussions that will be taking place during the upcoming  “Globes” Israel Business Conference 2009,” scheduled to be held at David Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv this week on December 13-14.

The two day conference will feature a panel composed of representatives of various sectors of Israel’s investment and development sectors in the fields of alternative and renewable energy, water recycling and purification, and the role the country’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries can play in the development of cleaner and “greener” manufacturing in these important industries.

One of these participants, Booky Oren, chairman of the Arison Group’s Miya Water Venture, will talk about the role the Arison Group is playing in preventing water systems losses by local municipality water utility systems.

Oren’s  consortium, chaired by Arison Group Chairperson Shari Arison, invested $100 million in the water loss detection venture to help municipalities in various countries detect and repair water leakages in their water systems by installing sophisticated water loss detection equipment.

Other areas include financial innovations in capital markets, developing markets, and environmental financing, by such firms as the Shlomo Group, one of the country’s leading investment conglomerates.

Headed by Shlomo Smeltzer, the Shlomo Group has interests in a number of business enterprises, including the vehicles, manufacture and installation of monitoring and control systems for the natural gas industry, the Tadiran Telecommunications Industries, shipbuilding, and real estate.

Moderator for the forum will be Prof. Glenn Yago director of the Milken Institute of Capital Studies and an expert on making the most innovative use of financial instruments in social and environmental projects, including those involving climate change.

Israel’s clean tech ventures, particularly those in water resources and solar energy are some of the most advanced in the world. In the book “Start Up Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Israel lists more companies on America’s NASDAQ than all of Europe, Japan, Korea, India, and China combined. However, not too many clean tech companies are publicly traded. Ormat, the geothermal energy extraction company is one of them. Technically, the company considers itself American, since it’s officially headquartered there.

Ideas generated from the two day forum, hope to give Israel a leading edge on environmental friendly technologies that are being featured at the climate change conference in Copenhagen (see Better Place).

Photo: www.h20report.com

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