Talk:Energy tower (downdraft)/Zwirn
Energy Towers:
Pros and Cons of the Arubot Sharav Alternative Energy Proposal
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Michael J. Zwirn
Arava Institute for Environmental Studies
Kibbutz Ketura, Israel
January 1997
I. Israel's Energy Use Patterns
Israel, a rapidly industrializing nation with massive rates of population growth in all sectors due to immigration and demographic shifts, is unusually vulnerable in terms of energy supply. In the Middle East, the world's greatest producer of petroleum, it lacks any significant reserves of fossil fuels and is bound in seemingly perpetual political conflicts with its oil-rich neighbors. While other alternative energy sources have been developed, industrial and domestic demands have outpaced internal production of energy. The high rates of growth in demand and the political vulnerability have led Israel to pursue publicly-funded, governmentally-initiated mandates to investigate energy conservation and production, largely through the Misrad Energia, the Ministry of Energy. Despite calls to conserve, however, rates of demand are skyrocketing, with the largest growth in industry, commerce and domestic usage.1
| Economic Sector | 1988 usage, million kWh | 1993 usage, million kWh |
| Industry | 5,653.5 | 7,077.9 |
| Commerce | 4,102.8 | 6,385.9 |
| Domestic | 4,796.7 | 7,112.6 |
Concomitant with this surge in consumption has been a growth in Israel's capability to produce energy for home and industry through installed generative capacity, from 19,352 million kWh in 1988 to 25,994 in 1993. As part of this effort, Israel has dramatically increased the amount invested in electricity production by almost 100% in just four years in the middle 1990s.2
| Year | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 |
| Investment | $726 million | $936 million | $999 million | $1331 million |
Current trends in energy usage in Israel, were they to continue, would prove exorbitantly expensive, economically unviable in the long run, and environmentally unsound. The obvious question for Israel now is how best to improve its energy independence and conservation measures, continue to meet the needs of its growing economy, and at the same time work towards long-term economical and environmental sustainability.
II. Introduction to the Energy Towers
Israel has long been a leader in exploring new possibilities for energy production. Solar heating is an obvious choice in a region with abundant sunlight and high temperatures, and Israeli technicians are continually devoting time and effort to research on alternative sources of energy, including solar-thermal units and photovoltaic battery cells, solar-powered gas turbines, wind farms and an advanced solar tower complex.4 These sources have had major economic benefits. Israel's solar heaters help save 620 kWh each year, approximately 3.2% of the nation's total usage.3 The most potentially revolutionary of these alternative energy projects is called SNAP technology, or SNeh Aero-Electric Power.5 This program, designed by a group of Israeli scientists at the Israeli Institute of Technology, the Technion, is known in Hebrew as the Arubot Sharav, or Desert Wind Towers. The idea, as explained by the chief designer of the project, Dr. Dan Zaslavsky, is based on a principle discovered in America by a Lockheed Corporation physicist, but never before explored for practical use.
- The Energy Tower is a machine that produces wind. Hot and dry air is cooled within a very large vertical duct which looks like a high and very large diameter chimney. A fine spray of water is introduced across the top inlet to the duct. The water evaporates and cools the air. The cooled air descends because it is denser. It is the opposite of what happens in a regular chimney where hot air rises. Cold air descends. The descending air can reach a speed of 80 kilometers per hour. Before the air comes out of the bottom of the duct through special openings, it goes through air turbines that run generators for electricity productions.6
Water to be used in the tower would be pumped from the Red Sea's Gulf of Aqaba, some forty kilometers to the south, and then sprayed through the top of the structure. The dimensions of a full-scale commercial unit, designed to be constructed in the Southern Arava Desert, are between 800-1200 meters in height, 400-500 meters in diameter at the base, and with a weight of approximately 330,000 tons. It goes without saying that this would be the tallest manmade structure in history, and one of the great engineering feats of modern times. The Ministry of Energy report on the project notes that to achieve the highest wind speeds, and thus the most efficient production of energy, "requires a gigantic-size tower and a large temperature drop."7 The combined cost for designing a prototype on a 1:7 scale and then a full-scale working unit is estimated by the designer at $1.2 billion, and the projected production per unit is estimated to satisfy 15-17% of Israel's annual consumption. In addition, as will be described later, there are prospects for vast improvements in the efficiency and affordability of desalinating saltwater and for the creation of fish ponds as profitable, and socially beneficial, side projects to the primary goal of creating energy.
III. Design and Planning Processes
The design of the energy towers is based on a speculative article from 1975 by Dr. Philip Carlson, a physicist in California, who had observed the downdrafts created during brief rainstorms -- known in the U.S. as 'wind shear' -- and had contemplated possible alternative energy production based on the principle. In the Technion, a team of engineers investigating the concept over a period of more than a decade succeeded in devising a design proposal in which the cost effectiveness ratio of the project was improved by a factor of seven over the original.
When the basic proposal was completed, the director of the Research and Design division of the Ministry of Energy, Eitan Gur Arie, nominated a 12-person review team. The panel was comprised of structural, hydraulic, electrical and mechanical engineers, as well as a meteorologist, a physicist and an economist. The verdict was positive on this technical investigation and received financial and scientific support from the Ministry of Energy's chief scientist under the administration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and afterwards the Israeli Electric Corporation, the state-owned corporation which has a monopoly on electrical distribution. Since then more than 60 individual analysts from a range of disciplines have examined the proposal. In Zaslavsky's words, "Most of them turned in a positive opinion [on the engineering and economic viability of the project], though there were some with eccentric opinions too," including differing estimates on weight and energy efficiency.8 Another expert committee of engineers and physicists commissioned during Shimon Peres' tenure as Prime Minister approved the project and recommended that the Israeli government proceed, and an initial commitment of $4.5 million was recommended. The election of Binyamin Netanyahu and the subsequent shuffling of Cabinet posts has since led to a reorganization of the relevant ministry, which Zaslavsky cites in his criticism of recent interruptions in the design and planning processes.9
Currently the Technion design team has joined with an outside investor to create Energy Towers, Ltd., a corporation designed to pursue and bring to completion the project with the construction of a first tower in the Arava. At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Israeli Electric Corporation on August 15th, 1996, Dr. Zaslavsky presented his status report on the project in the form of a lecture, "Energy Towers: The Status of the Project." Shortly afterwards, the Committee for Allocation and Planning of the I.E.C. signed a Memorandum of Understanding to promote and support the building of a pilot plant, and aid with both financing and technology, as soon as possible. This is where the proposal currently stands, although there are certainly on-going negotiations on the timing and specifics of such a pilot plant, which Zaslavsky has tentatively planned for a currently operating saline pond site where the existing salt water pumping system could be used. A baseline schedule, included in a July 24, 1996 document, shows the pilot pre-design phase continuing through autumn 1997, overlapping with the first stages of the pilot plant's construction.10 From conversations which Dr. Zaslavsky and other more recent documents, it seems certain that these dates will be pushed back due to negotiations with government and private investors, as well as the inevitable uncertainties of planning a major project such as this. The baseline schedule calls for the pilot plant to be tested until the first quarter of 1999, with the full-scale commercial unit's construction scheduled for 1999-2002. Individual elements of the project, such as the fish ponds and desalination plant, will be working during the completion of the structure, and the plant is scheduled to go on the Israeli power grid sometime in 2003.
IV. Planning and Decision-Making Patterns and Concerns
The planning of a project such as this, involving government, research and capital in a complex interrelationship, illustrates potential concerns with the Energy Towers proposal as it currently stands. There are four elements of the planning process I wish to examine in turn: The technical background of the design and review team, the complex personal and professional relationships involved, the vulnerability to outside political and social events, and the series of questions asked in evaluating the process.
Firstly, the Energy Towers proposal was initiated within the research community by a group of scientists, and later brought explicitly to the attention of government and capital groups. This has a great deal to say about the highly technocratic nature of the design and review teams -- in all the teams of reviewers and designers, the predominance of engineers, physicists and others in the scientific community is overwhelming. Had the project been discussed first by individuals with backgrounds outside the scientific community, different lenses of analysis may have been applied. For example, someone speaking from the environmental community may have brought in issues of long-term energy sustainability, or a speaker from the military establishment may have raised questions on security related to the proposal. There is at least one conspicuous shortcoming in the two review teams assigned by the Ministry of Energy to the Energy Towers Project. Neither has anyone with a systems or 'big picture' background. For example, there is no sign that anyone in the review team comes to the problem from the perspective of systems theory or ecology, where elements are examined from a perspective of their effects on, and vulnerability to, external events in the system. In a systems analysis, the current environment -- political, economic, ecological, etc. -- is scanned for problems, which are identified in terms of goals and objectives. Resources are examined, costs and benefits calculated, and the preferred course is one that maximizes the net expectation, "probability multiplied by utility." On this basis, a management initiative is established, designed to be flexible enough to cope with changes or recalculations during the actual design process.11 Ironically, Zaslavsky himself seems to have the benefit of such a background, with his personal experience in government, research and resource management. But if those analyzing the project lack this background, and examine only their narrow specialty areas, larger concerns in the project may be overlooked. During the review process, reviewers tended to agree with the proposal in their own fields, but were skeptical about prognoses made in other fields. Within the 60-odd generally favorable reviews, none of which were published, Zaslavsky notes a handful of "wild disagreements," which he credits to mathematical oversights or scientifically unfounded assumptions.12 For the time being, the team of designers is being protective of its intellectual property and has not permitted the release of either their own designs or of the external reviews, which makes independent analysis exceedingly difficult.
Secondly, the individual at the heart of the Energy Towers proposal, Dr. Dan Zaslavsky, is involved in all sides of the current negotiations. As the chief designer and researcher at the Technion, where he chairs the Agricultural Engineering Department, he was at the center of the research throughout the program's genesis. In addition, as the former Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Energy and former Water Commissioner for the State of Israel, he has a tremendous network of ties within government and regulatory circles. Zaslavsky is one of the co-founders of Energy Towers (Israel) Ltd. and if the Energy Towers project is successfully brought to completion, he can be expected to personally benefit a great deal. In addition, in any large scale project, there is always an element of danger when the proponent of the project believes to know exactly what the best solution to a perceived problem is -- namely, it tends to be the proponent's own project. When one individual's pet project runs headlong into another's the personal relationships and egos involved tend to obliterate any hope of analyzing projects on the basis of their merit or need. Dr. Zaslavsky has distributed analyses of competing projects, including the proposed Dead Sea-Red Sea Canal, the Solar 2 project, and other proposals for energy and water production, with the intent to cast doubts on their prospects and viability.13 These projects compete for finances, technical assistance, and the time of legislators and politicians investigating alternative energy plans, and it appears clear the Zaslavsky perceives them as threats to the future of the Energy Towers. The Israeli technical sector is an accomplished one, but it is numerically small and its membership moves rapidly between the governmental, military, research and commercial sectors. Personal relationships assume tremendous importance and there is the danger that the perceptions of personalities will overwhelm the associated projects.
Thirdly, the planning of the Energy Towers and the relations between the various actors in the proposal (Zaslavsky and the Technion research team, the Ministry of Energy, the private investors in Israel and elsewhere) have been affected -- sometimes violently -- by unforeseen and indeed unforeseeable events in the larger political sphere. In the Energy Towers proposal, technical decision-making has proven all-too-vulnerable to the political realm. The assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the ascension of Shimon Peres and the subsequent victory of Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud Party have all contributed to uncertainties as to the political viability and timeframe of the Energy Towers. Zaslavsky's plan was brought to the attention of the Rabin government, and through it to the caretaker Peres administration, but every shuffling of ministerial staff and reassessment of financial resources has cast the project in a different political light. Zaslavsky's perception of the political oversight of the Ministry of Energy is illustrated in the following quote: ".... then the elections came and a new government, a new minister, and a complete reorganization of the ministry took place. There was a reservation to the recommendation of the expert committee by one of the committee's members [who] unsuccessfully tried his own way to compute the power output of the tower and messed it up completely."14 His personal frustration is understandable but dangerous from a planning perspective -- a project this vast, to be funded in large part by the government, is going to be susceptible to such political shifts, and careful consideration of wider political trends must be made. The constellations of interest in a massive project is subject to outside events in political and economic realms whose prospects cannot be easily assessed, the "multi-national consortium of utilities and large construction companies" needed for such a venture will be acted upon by such trends.15
Finally, an important question is raised by an interesting section of the document prepared by the Technion design team and delivered by Dr. Zaslavsky to the Israeli Electric Corporation. In the fifth section of the presentation, the design team presents a list of tests or questions which must be answered satisfactorily in order to evaluate the project. The list is designed into six sets, in such areas as technical capabilities, technological availability, risks, finances, environmental impacts, and legal requirements. The list appears quite comprehensive from a technocratic perspective, but one glaring omission remains: The question of need. The study and proposal are predicated on the belief that rates of consumption of water and energy will continue on their present paths, or increase, and that new sources will be needed to satisfy this needs. This is not a certainty, it is merely the prevailing trend. For example, there are unexplored prospects for conservation of energy through such unglamorous but proven means as replacing lightbulbs and improving insulation in homes. Amory Lovins, an American advocate of alternative and 'soft' energy sources, writes that "We can plug leaks and use thriftier technologies to produce exactly the same output of goods and services -- and bads and nuisances -- as before, substituting other resources ... for some of the energy we formerly used."16 These small-scale improvements on the technical level result in small individual gains in conservation, which applied on a national level to both industry and domestic consumers could have a profound effect on consumption patterns regardless of economic and population growth patterns.
V. The Energy Towers Seen Through Green-Tinted Lenses
From an environmental perspective, the Energy Towers present both benefits and hazards of enormous proportions. Put simply, whether its effects are good or bad, the Energy Towers will have larger environmental effects than any project in the Arava's history. The only comparable proposal was the Voice of America radio towers proposal from the Reagan administration during the 1980s, which eventually was canceled in the 1990s due to budget problems and the disappearance of the perceived need for the project.17 However, while the VOA towers would have only negative impacts from the green perspective, the Energy Towers has the potential for dramatic improvements in Israel and the world's environment. As Zaslavsky writes audaciously, the Energy Towers project "solves the two most serious world environmental problems today."18 This means that the environmental prospects, both good and bad, must be weighed against each other.
The single most obvious boon for the environment comes from the production of large quantities of energy without the depletion of fossil fuels and the commensurate pollution of the air, water, and ground. The global network fossil fuel extractors, distributors, and consumers is one of the gravest threats to the preservation of a viable global ecosystem. It leads to environmental degradation and pollution throughout every stage -- strip-mining of coal, oil spills at sea, smog over cities from burning gasoline, global warming from CO2 emissions, the destruction of sensitive marine habitats, and countless other micro- and macro-effects. In a rapidly industrializing world with soaring demands for fuel, any alternative to fossil fuels is worth investigating. However, successes in developing alternative sources of energy have been localized and limited, as well as economically noncompetitive. Hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass are the five generally agreed possibilities for sustainable, non-polluting energy sources, but all suffer from the problem of low enthalpy -- it takes a great deal of water, wind, sun or biological matter to create a relatively small amount of energy. Petroleum by-products, on the other hand, are exceptional for their high levels of potential energy per mass. The other alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear power, a prospect which has difficulties that go far beyond the scope of this paper. Currently in Israel, a nation with excellent technical and research background, solar reflectors and geothermal technologies have been underutilized, even though the climate and geography are well-suited for the options and two Israeli corporations, Lutz and Ormat, are leaders in those fields.19 Lutz created an experimental "solar city" in the 1970s, but did so in California, not Israel, and has since gone into bankruptcy. Zaslavsky claims that his group has created an energy source that uses the natural forces of desert heat and wind, combined with a resource like sea water, that can surpass the enthalpy problem through size and economies of size. If so, it should be investigated further.
The other great boon for the environment appears to be in the production of cheap, clean fresh water through a reverse-osmosis desalination plant to be co-designed with the Energy Tower unit itself. Because the tower's operation requires water to be pumped from the sea in massive amounts, there will already be salt water available. As it pours down the tower in a perpetual rain, atomized into a fine mist at an altitude of one kilometer, it can be forced through permeable membranes at the bottom and the salt removed. The cost of the desalinated sea water is projected at 50% of current technologies with only 1/3 of the required energy for pumping. For hundreds of millions of cubic meters of water, this saving amounts to possibly one billion dollars, bringing desalinated water within economically feasible range.20 The preservation of water quality within other Israeli fresh water supplies can also be maintained if Energy Towers enable large-scale desalination. Israel's wells are marginal in their quality, and due to ever-growing threats from salination, nitrate pollution and other hazards incurred to ground and surface water supplies, their quality is rapidly declining. The coastal aquifer is already salinated, and the mountain aquifer shared between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is threatened. If desalinated water in large quantities is available for agriculture and domestic use, the Israeli authorities could end the destructive over-pumping of ground water once and for all. This could result in the replenishment of ground supplies and the repair of years of damage incurred in unwise allocation of Israel's limited supplies. In addition, in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, desalinated water could play a large role in reducing the potential for conflict over diminishing shared resources, which is seen by many analysts in the environmental security field as a real threat.21
Environmental hazards that could associated with the Energy Towers range from aesthetic concerns to major harms to agriculture. Most hazards, however, are currently speculative, and must be considered as part of a "worst case," or at least "worse case," scenario. Firstly, there are some obvious impacts inherent in any large construction project in a desert ecosystem: 1.) The several kilometers square that would be obliterated from construction equipment, mobile offices, homes and buildings; 2.) The building of a road capable of handling massive pieces of equipment and large earth-moving and construction vehicles; 3.) The silicates dispersed into the air from construction; and 4.) The demands on the local environment from the men and women who will be living in the ecosystem during construction and operation, who will number around several thousand.
In addition to these possible environmental threats, there are some concerns unique to the Energy Tower proposal. I have chosen to present these possible effects on several different levels, ranging from the most immediately obvious to the most deep-seated structural issues beneath the surface.
On the most basic level, concerns are intuitive and aesthetic -- a 1.2 kilometer tall tower, with a base 400 meters in diameter, will certainly change anyone's visual impression of the Arava forever, especially near Timna Park, an ecosystem with wild animals and plants and extensive recreational hiking. Zaslavsky has informally estimated that the tower could be visible from 20-25 kilometers away, a significant visual impact indeed. There is also the concern that the tower's turbines could produce a continual roaring echo up and down the Arava like that of a jet aircraft. The Technion team cannot gauge the noise in models, but promises to investigate possibilities of shielding.
Secondary concerns are primarily concerned with possible pollution and meteorological effects. The greatest pollutant threat comes from saline brine which is used for the tower and as the source of desalinated water. The sea water would be pumped some 40 kilometers through a network of pipes from the Gulf of Aqaba, sprayed into the tower and then funneled through the reverse osmosis membrane, and the ensuing highly concentrated brine would be sent back through open-air channels. If either the sea water or the brine were to leak and contaminate the soil or groundwater, the area nearby would be rendered unviable for agricultural use, and any indigenous plant and animal life would be threatened. Concentrated brine is particularly dangerous in this regard, as Zaslavsky has acknowledged both explicitly and implicitly. For this reason, the pilot plant may be situated in the aforementioned salt pond area, which is already unusable for agriculture or wildlife. Meteorological effects from a 1.2 kilometer tower involving wind and sea water cannot be adequately determined yet, according to the design team's documents, but there is room for speculation and possible concern. Any structure this large will create a microclimate where winds and even humidity or precipitation patterns change. While the microclimate will probably be limited to the area immediately around the structure, the tower's effects on climate from salt water sources and swirling winds may be a concern. On the regional level, there are concerns that airborne salts from the evaporation of sea water could disperse due to the spray of sea water into the tower. Forecasting climates through mathematical and computer modeling is notoriously difficult -- it is used as a standard demonstration of chaos theory -- and no one can say with certainty what the Energy Towers will cause within the Arava, a region with major agricultural production for both domestic and export markets. Dr. Zaslavsky estimates that the winds coming out, after being sapped of their force in driving the turbines, will be cooler and more humid, but cannot yet quantify any change in air conditions or impacts on agriculture.22 In response to a question from an Arava Institute student who was concerned that in the summer the humidity could create an intolerable Heat Index, he pointed out contradictory scientific predictions, but promised future study.
A third level of concern is biocentric in nature, and deals with the impacts on wildlife and ecosystems. In addition to the concerns over salts and climate which have already been addressed, there is a major concern in the environmental community for the bird life which passes through the Arava twice each year, in one of the world's most important migration patterns. The Arava region is part of the Syro-African Rift Valley, through which birds migrate between Africa and Europe in vast numbers in spring and winter. Among these birds are species of diverse sorts: predatory falcons, cranes and herons, herbivores, and seed-eaters, ranging from tiny to large. In addition to the sheer numbers of birds, there is great species diversity. Primary concerns for the bird life are based on the sheer size of the tower and the design of the mechanism for generating power itself. The cold water sprayed over the top of the tower generates a downdraft that could endanger the lives of small birds, sucking them to their deaths at the bottom of the tower. While there are debates on the numbers of birds at that altitude who could be threatened by the tower's mechanism, it is a concern that the Technion team seems to take seriously. They have modified their initial designs for a narrow chute that takes in air at a speed of 29 m/sec in the hottest days of July to a wider duct designed to take in air at a rate of approximately 10 m/sec. This will presumably reduce the risk that birds will be sucked inwards. Zaslavsky promises to continue study on the matter of bird populations, and has spoken to ornithologists on this concern, who have expressed their cautious judgment that birds will not smash into the structure if it is lit at light. However, the simple fact of the matter is that no one can judge the effects of a kilometer-tall structure appearing in the heart of a major migratory bird path. More research is to be undertaken in this matter by scholars specializing in bird populations, based in large part on the studies of the Voice of America affair, in which the concerns of bird-lovers played a large role in the environmental debate. While the VOA transmitters differ in many ways from an Energy Tower, their possible impacts on bird life are similar.
VI. Philosophy, Ideology and Structural Questions
The final level at which to analyze the Energy Tower proposal with an environmental focus is a structural one -- necessarily the most speculative level but arguably the most important. Taken at its designer's word, the Energy Tower produces abundant water and energy, in a region in which neither is easily available. If everything works, then, it is likely that new population centers will spring up in Israel's south, a region with 70% of the country's landmass but only scattered population centers based on agriculture. Energy Towers could realize the dream of Ben-Gurion, who visualized 'making the desert bloom' with agriculture, commerce and human settlement. Indeed, in speaking to kibbutznikim and settlers, in the area in which they live, work and raise families, Dan Zaslavsky described the Energy Towers as the only proposal that could 'build' the Arava and the Negev. In other words, the desert is incomplete without the development projects that typify the rest of Israel. This perspective reflects classical Zionist conceptions, which are typified by an anthropocentric, utilitarian perspective on nature "in which intrinsic, non-instrumental interests of the environment do not exist."23 As a result of these philosophical ideals and biases, the debate in Israel on environmental and resource issues, even when presented by the pro-environment community, is dominated by anthropocentric modes of thinking that devalue the long-term ecocentric perspective. Instead, human needs and immediate goals are prioritized. De-Shalit and Talias credit this in part to persistent, crisis-level concerns on political and economic security within the State of Israel, but to a greater part to Zionism itself as a land-based, nationalist ideology whose focus is on development and building as the tools for the construction of a modern state for the Jewish people.
A debate in a presentation to the Arava Institute student body and staff is telling. One student, attempting to bring a larger sense of environmental consciousness to the discussion, pointed out in response to Zaslavsky's technical discussion that "environmental concerns are more than just human." He pursued the possibly negative consequences for widespread development and massive growth of human populations and agriculture in a region where the natural environment may not be able to bear the burden. Zaslavsky responded, quite angrily, "The question frustrates me." In his judgment, it presumed that humans should not be allowed or encouraged to pursue their goals for development -- because they would, regardless of the means or consequences. He argued that the best goal is to develop the most environmentally sound means of development, and to enable people to develop realistic alternative to historically unsound means. He likewise contended that, in his experience, environmental groups have been willing to protest against industrial development initiatives, but unwilling to think of alternatives. Instead, he suggested that, assuming humanity's common desire to grow and develop, those with the skills should work within those expectations toward the best possible future. While the tension appeared high during the debate, Zaslavsky later sent a letter to the Arava Institute's director in which he mentioned favorably that he had been drawn into an interesting philosophical discussion on environmentalism and sustainability.24 Whether this is polite formality or a serious response cannot be known.
Zaslavsky's anthropocentric, reform-oriented focus should not lead one to denigrate him as an anti-environmentalist. On the contrary, his concerns for water supply and energy sustainability have led him to pursue what he sees as the best possible solution for the preservation of Israel's environment and the betterment of the lives of its citizens. When kibbutz members discuss the possible threat to their local farms or their enjoyment of the desert environment, and students debate ecocentrism, he argues for a technical solution. The debate thus resembles an on-going dispute in the United Kingdom over land-intensive wind farms, another alternative energy source. In this "case of conflicting values," a technical solution that posed an alternative to fossil fuels is favored by modern, global groups such as Greenpeace and the Friends of the Earth. In the meantime, locally-based "nature groups" like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds oppose the wind farms on the basis that they destroy landscapes, produce visual and auditory pollution, and interfere with the local lifestyle. It is not a conflict between pro- and anti-environmentalists, it is a battle of different perspectives on environmental protection.
VII. Conclusions and Recommendations
With a proposal of this magnitude, it is difficult to come up with a simple yea or nay recommendation. Clearly, there are some major difficulties from a planning and environmental perspective with the Energy Tower proposal, and major questions remain to be answered.
From the planning perspective, the major scientific and technical questions seem to be addressed with as much precision as is currently possible. Certain difficulties remain nonetheless.
1.) The focus under which this analysis is being conducted is troubling. It seems clear that a system-wide lens of analysis should be added to the current review processes in the government Ministry of Energy and within the design team. The current technical reviewers have isolated concerns within their own fields while no one has undertaken an analysis of the proposal as a whole. Without this perspective, the danger exists that individuals within the scientific community could put their own specialties under the microscope, while the larger project balloons into bankruptcy;
2.) Reviews and analyses are not publicly available, and are subject to bias. The opportunity for publicly distributed, independent analyses should be made a priority. It should be possible, and certainly beneficial from a public policy perspective, for skilled professionals to get access to information and publish their findings, while respecting the intellectual property rights of Energy Towers Ltd. But currently, the 60-odd reviews are all confidential, and someone examining the proposal must rely on the scant publicly available data, all produced in-house with the expected biases;
3.) The policy debate is too tied up with personal relationships and conflicts. The nature of a proposal of this size is too important for its future to be determined on the basis of personal ties. Yet Zaslavsky complains that ministry officials with ties to other projects have denigrated the Energy Tower, and have protested, "We have our project that we already became used to ... we cannot change our order of priorities every time someone comes up with a new proposal."25 Conversely, Zaslavsky and his team have proven willing to engage in their own trash-talking of other projects and personnel within government ministries. If a debate of this magnitude cannot be conducted on a civil basis, it is unlikely that any decision can be made on merit alone;
4.) Vulnerability to political shifts is severe. The turn of events in the Prime Minister's office within the past year alone, with one assassination, one ascension to power, and one counter-election, make this abundantly clear. The year between 1996-1997 was uniquely difficult, to be sure, but allowances must be made in planning for shifts within larger Israeli society, so that the damage done to the project's budget and time-table is minimized;
5.) Most importantly, a comprehensive analysis of need does not yet exist. Rather than merely presuming that demands for energy will follow their current path, the Energy Tower proponents should examine the projections for need under a number of alternative energy patterns that incorporate greater conservation measures. If the profitability and economical viability of the Energy Tower proposal wither in an analysis that features widespread energy conservation, there would be good reason to seriously question whether or not Israel should devote its resources to producing greater supplies of energy when much of its current supply is being wasted or used inefficiently. Hall notes in Great Planning Disasters that in systems dominated by bureaucratic decision-making "there is a standard tendency in bureaucratic mechanisms to over-produce the supply of public goods [needed].... Because bureaucrats have little direct interest in the costs of their programmes ... there is a general tendency for cost escalation in public projects."26 If the ministerial staff in the Misrad Energia were to endorse a project that produces unneeded energy with needed funds, they would be in essence guilty of a billion-dollar theft from the taxpayers of Israel. From the green perspective, the possible benefits of one or more Energy Towers supplying water and electric current to Israel are clear, the possible harms less so. A number of questions must be answered before several years and at least a billion dollars are invested in a commercial Energy Tower unit. Following are a possible list of environmental impacts to be gauged.
1.) Construction, waste and land use. It would hypocritical to design a supposedly environmentally-friendly Energy Tower using traditional Israeli construction and land use methods, which degrade the local environment by recklessly throwing up roads and temporary buildings that permanently destroy sensitive ecosystems for short-term needs. A revised environmental impact statement on proposed construction technology and waste disposal should be made available every time the proposal moves forward, in light of both construction needs and the regional environment;
2.) Aesthetic concerns. The concerns of the residents of the Arava on noise and visual pollution should not be discounted. They are the people with the most to lose from a regional aesthetic menace, and if on-going studies indicate noise pollution on a large scale, shielding mechanisms should be investigated. While a kilometer-tall tower cannot be conveniently hidden out of sight, efforts should be made to minimize the visual pollution by keeping it close in color to the desert tones and ensuring that bright lights at night are not aimed directly at human settlements;
3.) Saline Pollution. According to Dr. Zaslavsky, the Technion team is dedicated to using only commercially proven technical elements. As such they have experimented with a range of possible means of dispersing salt mist into the tower, and have had to review means of atomizing the water into uniformly sized droplets. The possible danger is that salt spray will escape the tower either at the top of the tower or through the turbines at the bottom, salinating the area's soils permanently. In addition, the system of pipes and channels that will carry seawater north and concentrated brine south pose problems with leakage, which would contaminate the land permanently. Exceptional care must be taken with the construction and maintenance of this system in order to protect agriculture and native ecosystems;
4.) Meteorological effects in the region. There can be no proceeding to the construction of a commercial unit if the designers cannot determine from the pilot plant the possible detrimental effects on the Arava's climate. The well-being of the region is based on agriculture in what is already a marginal area, so if the Energy Tower has detrimental effects on agriculture through changing the temperature, wind patterns, or humidity, the viability of the Arava's settlements could be threatened. This cannot be determined wholly from computer models, so the designers must determine it from data from the pilot plant;
5.) Ecosystem-wide effects, particularly those on migrating birds. So far, the Technion team has shown itself willing to listen to the concerns of ornithologists and bird-lovers on possible threats to the migratory birds that use the Arava as their thoroughfare between Europe and Africa. Indeed, they have even changed part of their design in response to these concerns. However, there is still no way of judging whether the tower will have negligible impact on bird populations and health, or whether it will literally suck birds out of the sky. The environmental importance of the Arava to Euro-Africa's bird population is tremendous -- it is one of the very few paths between the two continents that does not require a lengthy trip over the Mediterranean or over high mountains, and thus is the route of choice for birds of all sorts. Its disruption would be a major disaster, and could conceivably result in the extinction of many distinct species that could not reach their summer and winter homes. More study is essential, some of which can only be conducted after the construction of the 1:7 scale pilot model, but nothing can ever ensure that bird populations are safe. In the absence of certainty Energy Towers Ltd. must consult with as many authorities as possible and commit themselves to tailor their design in the light of ecosystem needs; and finally,
6.) Structural patterns of resource use. All the environmental impact research presented so far by the Energy Towers team has been technical analysis, on the micro- level. An environmental planner should be responsible for examining more than just the nuts and bolts of a given program, she or he should be obligated to examine impacts on the structure of a given society. The designers of Energy Towers Ltd. are obligated to analyze their efforts on more than the technocratic level; they should analyze possible impacts on Israel's larger resource consumption trends. For example, is it really worth the effort to devise a billion-dollar machine to contribute 15% of Israel's energy, if the result is that Israel boosts its energy consumption by the same amount without improving conservation measures? Pumping more energy into an inefficient and wasteful energy grid is akin to trying to solve the problem of a leaky showerhead by increasing the water pressure. In that vein, it is ludicrous to add thousands of cubic meters of fresh water through desalination if there is no simultaneous initiative to end the drilling of new wells, limit the annual take of water from the Kinneret and the surface water supply, and vigorously campaign against the polluting of aquifers by nitrates. The guiding principle of the Energy Towers must be aimed at substituting for the unsustainable water and energy patterns of the past in Israeli society, instead of merely supplementing them. From an environmental perspective, every kilowatt of energy or cubic meter of fresh water produced by an Energy Tower should replace previous sources of energy or water. Improved conservation technologies and policies should do the rest. Anything else would be a textbook example of throwing good money -- and energy and water -- after bad.
After expressing all these reservations and illustrating the shortcomings of the current proposal, I nonetheless would like to express provisional support for the Energy Tower proposal, assuming the proponents of the program take steps to remedy some of the more problematic elements of their planning and decision-making, and renew their efforts to address the unanswered questions on possible negative environmental efforts. As Zaslavsky has noted, the ultimate decision comes on the basis of a compromise between possible positive and negative effects, based on knowledge that is often incomplete. If the construction of a pilot plant on a 1:7 scale will answer some of the technical and environmental impact questions, it is worth supporting for its chances of alleviating two of Israel's and the world's most pressing environmental problems, the fossil fuel crisis and the growing shortages of clean winter. I recommend that the Israeli environmental community ask such questions, and think of others based on their own experiences, knowledge and areas of expertise, when assessing Dr. Zaslavsky's proposal.
References
1. Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics. From The Economist Intelligence Unit, "Israel," London 1995, p. 26.
2. "The Israeli Economy at a Glance 1995," Ministry of Industry and Trade, Jerusalem 1995, p. 8.
3. "Energy 95," Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, Jerusalem 1995.
4. "Sustainability of Energy-Related Development Projects in the Middle East Peace Region," Israeli Union for Environmental Defense, March 1995, pp. 7-9.
5. Sneh is the Hebrew word used in the story of the Burning Bush, in Exodus 3:2. "... the bush burned and was not consumed." The implication is apparently that like the Biblical burning bush, the Energy Towers will yield energy without the destruction of fuel.
6. Zaslavsky, Dr. Dan. "Energy Towers: The Status of the Project." September 1996, p. 20. Lecture prepared for the Board of Directors of the Israeli Electric Company (August 1996), translated. Internal reference number R9610-1.
7. Er-El, Joseph. "Energy Towers-SNAP Technology." Israeli Energy News, Summer 1994. Published by Israeli Institute of Petrology and Energy in cooperation with the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure.
8. Zaslavsky, p. 17.
9. Zaslavsky, p. 8.
10. Zaslavsky, Dan. "“Œ -¾”ÝŽ’ ˆ¿Œ‡Œœ ¿‡ ŠŠÝ‹–Ž Œ“‡ÝŽŽœ ”œÖ• “Œ› -- œÖšŽ¿ ”ÝŠ“Ž’." July 24, 1996. Internal reference number R9610B.
11. Hall, Peter. Great Planning Disasters, p. 190. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1980, University of California Press (American Edition), Berkeley 1992.
12. Zaslavsky, personal communication, November 14, 1996.
13. "Jordan Rift Valley: Integrated Development Study." Harza JRV Group, October 30, 1996. Internal reference number R9617.
14. Zaslavsky, p. 18.
15. Er-El, p. 4.
16. Lovins, Amory B. Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace, p. 32. Harper Colophon Books, New York 1977.
17. For a detailed discussion of the Voice of America proposal and its environmental debate, see De-Shalit, Avner and Talias, Moti. "Green or Blue and White? Environmental Controversies in Israel," Environmental Politics, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 273-294.
18. Zaslavsky, p. 6.
19. IUED, p. 8.
20. Zaslavsky, p. 26.
21. Lowi, Miriam R. "Political and Institutional Responses to Transboundary Water Disputes in the Middle East." Woodrow Wilson Environmental Change and Security Project Report, Issue 2, Spring 1996, pp. 5-8.
22. Zaslavsky, discussion with kibbutz members and interested community members, Kibbutz Ketura Moadon, 13 November 1996.
23. De-Shalit and Talias, p. 283.
24. Zaslavsky, personal letter to Dr. Alon Tal, dated November 19, 1996.
25. Zaslavsky, p. 17.
26. Hall, pp. 243-244.
- This is a copy of Google's cache of http://www.macdialup.com/zwilliams/arubot.htm . The link was dead, but Google's cache still existed. I placed it here to preserve it for the time being. JdH 09:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)