OREGON GOV. TED KULONGOSKI, right, talks with Solel Solar Systems President Kevin Swartz at Solel’s plant in Beit Shemesh, Israel, near Jerusalem. In the background is Chip Terhune, the governor’s chief of staff.
Governor sees model for Oregon, America
Kulongoski visits Israel
By Paul Haist
Ted Kulongoski says the media got it wrong when they labeled his recent trip to Israel a trade mission. Oregon’s governor preferred to call his trip on the eve of Israel’s 60th anniversary a “business development mission.”
It was a trip focused on global warming and a trip from which the governor, who has led a high-profile agenda to combat global warming, returned convinced that Israel has some important lessons for Oregon and America.
“Energy security equates to economic security and to national security,” said the governor in a conversation with the Jewish Review. “I think Israel has made that connection better than the United States.”
Kulongoski was in Israel April 1-4 after first stopping in Europe on the March 29 inaugural Portland-Amsterdam nonstop flight operated by Northwest Airlines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
In Europe Kulongoski met with European Union officials in Brussels to discuss Europe’s cap-and-trade system of regulating greenhouse gasses.
The governor plans to draft legislation this year for a cap-and-trade program in Oregon in concert with the Western Climate Initiative.
In Israel the governor’s focus was the development of alternative energy sources with an eye to further such development in Oregon.
After a tour of Jerusalem’s Old City where the complexities of maintaining security were the central topic, the governor and his entourage were hosted for lunch on April 2 by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
That afternoon the delegation moved on to ORMAT Technologies, Israel’s Yavne-based global developer of geothermal energy.
Ormat produces what they describe as clean electricity through its worldwide network of geothermal power plants.
According to their promotional material, they extract hot water from near the earth’s core then use that water to create steam that drives turbine-generators before the water is pumped back into the ground and used again.
Kulongoski said ORMAT already has a lease in the geothermally active Newberry Crater in central Oregon.
While not speculating on ORMAT’s plans for the Newberry area, the governor said ORMAT officials were aware of Oregon’s business energy tax credit, which can effectively underwrite up to 50 percent of eligible project costs for renewable resource projects.
ORMAT is bidding to provide equipment on two unspecified projects in Oregon, with a possible third project under consideration.
On the same day he visited with ORMAT officials, the governor also called on the Intel facility at Kiryat Gat. The Hillsboro computer chip manufacturer has close ties with Israel.
Kulongoski toured the soon-to-open cutting-edge 300-millimeter-wafer/45-nanometer chip fabrication site that was designed in Hillsboro.
Computer chips aside, the governor said his conversation with Intel focused chiefly on their activities in energy and water conservation and development, areas in which he said Israel has pioneered out of necessity, relying for water, for example, on a shrinking Kinneret. He said that energy and water strategies developed by Israel can serve as models for Oregon businesses.
The next day Kulongoski visited the Solel Solar Systems plant at Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem.
Solel specializes in the design, manufacture and installation of solar fields and their components for large-scale power generation. Their two-decades-old installation in California’s Mojave Desert produces more than 350 megawatts of electricity.
Solel’s technology obtains its energy from concentrated solar radiation that produces high-temperature steam or gas to drive turbine-generators. No pollutants are emitted in producing electricity in this manner, a characteristic that appeals to Kulongoski.
“Most people in Oregon would be surprised that Oregon could support solar farms,” he said. “But eastern Oregon has lots of sun.”
Pointing to a host of Israeli technological innovations, beginning, for example, with drip irrigation in arid climates, the governor praised the Jewish state.
He reiterated his view that Israel acts on necessity and is not reluctant to face up to reality in a rapidly changing environment.
“The Israelis aren’t just developing technology; they’re integrating it into their society. They’re years ahead,” he said.
While in Israel, Kulongoski was the dinner guest of Israeli Minister of Infrastructure Benjamin Ben Eliezer. The pair discussed the Israeli government’s commitment to provide an electric car network by 2016.
Kulongoski, who will complete his second and legally mandated final term as Oregon’s governor in 2010, demurred at the suggestion of his leaving a pro-environmental “legacy.”
“I am putting in place a process around climate change…making Oregon a national model for how we can do this,” he said, having noted previously that Israel can be a model for Oregon.
On the last full day of his third trip to Israel the governor visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust and Heroes’ Memorial where he laid a wreath “in remembrance of the six million who died in the Shoah, and peace to the nation born of their sacrifice.”