Israeli developers are working on more environmentally sustainable and affordable housing options. REAL Housing's prototype home in Ashalim incorporates geothermal heating, solar panels, and insulation to reduce energy costs. Nearby at Ben-Gurion University, the Neveh Zin solar neighborhood was designed according to passive solar principles to minimize energy usage. While green building is still nascent in Israel, advocates believe it can help address the country's lack of natural resources and growing population. Standards now exist to define green buildings, but further government support is still needed to promote widespread adoption of sustainable construction practices.

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2. A REAL viable solution
Jerusalem Post – Jerusalem
IN JERUSALEM 6 June 2008
Michael
Author:
Green
Date: Jun 6, 2008
Start Page: 10
Section: Features
Text Word
2495
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Document Text
Note: In keeping with the theme of this year's World Environment Day, some Israeli
developers are devising options that are good for the planet - and the pocketbook
As the smooth asphalt road running through the Negev community of Ashalim comes
to a sudden end, forklifts stir up clouds of dust on the uneven dirt path and a plain,
whitewashed house sits on a stony patch of earth. Here, a few kilometers northwest
of Sde Boker, seeds of green are beginning to sprout in an unlikely place.
Stepping into the building from the dry heat of the desert, the temperature drops to an
unseasonably cool - and certainly more comfortable - level. REAL Housing's
chairman Hy Brown says the building's microclimate owes itself to insulation from its
structured integrated paneling (SIP), as well as to the fact that the building is raised a
few inches off the ground, allowing air to circulate around the house, cooling it down.
The 70-square-meter prefabricated houses also incorporate geothermal heating and,
when they hit the production line, will come standard with solar roof panels.
Originally designed to provide affordable housing in Israel's undersupplied real estate
market, the first prototype home from the fledgling REAL (Renewable Energy for
Affordable Living) housing company could also offer homeowners a more
environmentally sustainable choice.
quot;I didn't set out to build solar power for Israel,quot; says Brown, whose previous projects
include the World Trade Center and Disney World. quot;Originally, the thrust was to design
affordable housing that could be built fast, not the environment. We were afraid to add
innovations because we didn't think we could get approval; but now we're going full
throttle to make them as sustainable as possible because we are getting government
support,quot; says Brown.
quot;There are lots of reasons why Israel needs to build green,quot; believes Yehuda Olander,
chairman of the Israeli chapter of the International Initiative for a Sustainable Built
Environment (IISBE). quot;Israel needs to be part of the international challenge to global
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3. warming, even though it is a small country and its effect will not be so [significant].
But it is not just about global problems. The country has its local problems, too. Israel
is very poor in terms of natural resources, for example oil, andE we are talking about
10 million people living here by 2020,quot; says Olander, who is also the manager of the
Sharon District's Regional Division for the Quality of the Environment.
This past Thursday was World Environment Day 2008, an annual event coordinated
by the United Nations Environment Program that is intended to raise awareness
about global environmental issues. This year's theme - quot;Toward a Low- Carbon
Economyquot; - urges households across the world to quot;Kick the Habitquot; of using fossil fuel
in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.
In Israel, private households consume 30 percent of the country's total electricity
production and a similar proportion of fresh water, according to the Environmental
Protection Ministry. Therefore, what people do at home, not to mention how their
homes are designed, has a huge impact on climate change.
quot;Buildings consume 50 to 55% of the energy used nationally in developed countries,quot;
says Michal Vital, green building planner and consultant. quot;[Energy] is not just
consumed by cars or industry, and people aren't aware of this.quot;
Commercial buildings eat up an additional 30% of Israel's electricity, mainly for
heating, cooling and lighting. But advocates for green construction say that if buildings
were designed with a little bit of ecological know-how, energy-hungry heating and air
conditioning - and the huge bills they incur - could become a thing of the past.
It has taken a while for the idea of environmental responsibility to catch on here, but
it's one that architects and local municipalities are now beginning to take seriously
when planning new communities.
REAL's lone prototype house, standing out like a sore thumb amid the portacabins
and caravillas that surround it, echoes the wider story of environmentally sound
architecture now taking root locally. Green building is beginning to shift from the
margins to the mainstream and could be the future. But despite Israel's being a world
leader in environmentally friendly technologies such as solar power, green building
remains in its infancy here.
Advocates, however, believe that green building has huge potential.
quot;It's taking its first steps in Israel, it's really like a baby now,quot; says Vital, adding that the
demand for green building has moved beyond what she calls quot;hard-corequot; green
activists.
Not far from Ashalim, at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Sde Boker campus,
quot;greeningquot; the desert has taken root in a different form. The Desert Architecture and
Urban Planning Unit of the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research has been at the
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4. forefront of developing solutions for human habitation in the harsh desert
environment, which comprises some 65% of Israel's total land mass. In the early
1990s, the first residents moved into the campus's Neveh Zin solar neighborhood,
designed to take advantage of the natural properties of the desert climate, promoting
the use of passive heating and cooling mechanisms and minimizing energy use.
Overlooking the breathtaking Zin Valley, Neveh Zin's public gardens, featuring
drought- and salinity-resistant plants, are kept to a minimum around the 80 carefully
designed detached houses whose common geometry and character allow them to fit
into the desert, both esthetically and ecologically. The single-family homes
incorporate the concept of quot;solar and wind rights,quot; ensuring that they receive the
maximum amount of sunshine possible when the sun is at its lowest altitude during
the cold winter months, while maximizing the cooling power of the wind in the
summer, explains Isaac Meir, chair of BGU's Department of Man in the Desert.
quot;We want summer night winds because they are cool and permeate the built
environment, flushing out the heat accumulated in the day. By taking into account the
altitude of the sun, we can define the distance needed between two buildings to
ensure they won't shade each other in the winter,quot; says Meir, who is working with the
Housing and Construction Ministry to develop an environmentally responsible
housing cluster in Beersheba's Ramot neighborhood.
quot;What we are doing with this specific cluster is trying to incorporate the same logic
and environmental strategies from Neveh Zin [in] something much more urban, with
[buildings of] five or six stories, the type of apartment blocks that developers like to
market in cities,quot; he says.
With 1,000 housing units, a school, synagogues and commercial areas planned, the
Ramot project marks one of the largest of its kind in Israel. But it's still on the drawing
board, lagging years behind the establishment of Neveh Zin.
quot;It takes time for new strategies to percolate down to professionals on the one hand
and decision-makers on the other,quot; says Meir. quot;I think the Housing Ministry is realizing
the importance of developing homes that are more environmentally friendly, user-
friendly and less resource- intensive.quot;
Olander believes that the slow development of green building in Israel stems partly
from the problem that, until recently, there had been no definition of what exactly
constituted a quot;green building.quot; To help catalyze the relationship between architecture
and ecology in the country, IISBE Israel was established four years ago and was a key
player in getting the first official guidelines for green building in Israel off the ground.
In November 2005, the Standards Institute of Israel published the Israel Standard
5281 for Buildings with Reduced Environmental Impact (commonly known as the
quot;Green Buildingsquot; standard), which addresses energy, water, land and other
environmental issues, including air quality and the building process. Homes and
offices in Israel can now proudly wear the quot;green buildingquot; label if they score 55 or
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5. more out of 100 points (over 75 qualifies a structure as an quot;outstanding green
buildingquot;) by meeting the standards' conditions.
Vital believes it's a good thing that Israel now has a green building standard but
argues that much of the responsibility for ensuring progress in this field lies with
lawmakers. quot;I don't mean the Knesset. If municipalities put green demands into city
plans, architects will have to follow them to have permission to build,quot; she says.
quot;Who's interested in green building? Local governments, not [the] national
government. Local governments are trying to bring citizens toE live in their cities and
they want them to be happy living there,quot; says Olander, He adds that the Kfar Saba
Municipality has already planned a 5,000-unit quot;green neighborhoodquot; and that there is
talk of building 10,000 green housing units in north Tel Aviv's Sde Dov district. In
addition, he believes there is interest in green building in Petah Tikva, Ra'anana and
Jerusalem.
quot;In the United States, the national government didn't take action to save energy or
promote green building - the local governments did it instead.quot; Olander points out.
But one man's palace can be another man's pollution as the developers of Eden Hills,
a new community under construction in the Elah Valley, south of Beit Shemesh, know
all too well. The first building at the project, which is set to be the last new town built in
central Israel, was inaugurated by Housing Minister Zeev Boim last month, following
18 years of delays and setbacks.
Developer Jake Leibowitz describes Eden Hills as his quot;vision of an ecological village,quot;
which will include environmentally friendly innovations such as solar power,
geothermal technology and water purification.
But Michelle Levine, spokesperson for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel,
describes Eden Hills as an quot;ecological catastrophequot; because it runs close to Israel's
primary wildlife corridor, a natural migratory path for flora and fauna. Following
interventions from the SPNI and other green groups, the regional planning council
ordered a reduction in the size of the development; but Levine argues that the
development should never have been given the go-ahead in the first place.
quot;Eden Hills is extraneous, does not abide by Israel 2020, and is in essence a bigger
disaster to the environment than their [water] and solar power schemes could ever
hope to rectify,quot; she says, adding that the National Planning Council had mistakenly
approved the community without waiting for the Environmental Impact Report. The
quot;Israel 2020quot; master plan for the country in the 21st century recommends that
sustainable development be based on the quot;prevention of new settlements and
increased density of existing onesE and emphasis on green buffers, open spaces
and the preservation of heritage and nature values.quot;
quot;No new community can call itself an 'environmental' community. We have gone past
the point where we can build more communities. There's only so much green space
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6. we can take up in Israel,quot; she declares.
But what about residents of the rest of the country, who live in houses that have been
standing for decades?
quot;It's very important not only to make new houses environmentally friendly but also to
improve existing homes,quot; agrees Olander, adding that Standard 5281 can also be
applied when renovating houses. quot;Our association [IISBE Israel] is trying to get the
information to everyone. To save important resources like energy and water, you don't
need to build a new house, you can be greener in your behavior too.quot;
Gil Peled, an architect and green building consultant, acknowledges that while it is
much easier to design ecologically sensitive buildings if starting from scratch,
constructing homes on a small scale could actually be less sustainable than building
within existing urban areas.
quot;Detached housing is, by definition, un-ecological,quot; he argues, noting the additional
roads, land and infrastructure needed, as well as its impact on wildlife. quot;Everybody
wants a detached house on half a dunam (1.23 acres) - that's the dream; but we just
don't have enough land,quot; says Peled, whose Eco-Housing Pilot Project has
successfully quot;greenedquot; the 10-family Jerusalem apartment building in which he lives
without resorting to technological fixes. quot;Motivation is the most resource- saving
device. If you have energy-efficient light bulbs but leave them on all day, you're not
saving anything,quot; he says. Since 2002, he explains, the use of energy and water in his
building, as well as its production of waste, has been slashed by 30%-50% by
initiatives that include recycling, energy-efficient appliances and rainwater collection.
But despite people's best intentions, going green doesn't come cheap. A typical
Israeli family thinking of switching to clean electricity would have to invest at least NIS
70,000 in photovoltaic (PV) panels to harness the sun's energy. Alon Tamari, CEO of
SolarPower Israel, says that most Israelis using PV cells are doing so for ideological
reasons. However, there could be a surge in demand following the announcement of
a long-awaited government incentive program to subsidize households' production of
their own solar power.
The Greek firm Solar Energy Hellas has developed a prototype quot;Energy Autonomous
Buildingquot; that aims to supply all a building's energy needs from the sun alone. The
firm is working with Israel solar power company Chromagen to bring the technology
across the Mediterranean. However, the building requires a 30% to 35% higher
capital investment than standard buildings.
Speaking last month at Bar-Ilan University's Conference for Green Industry and
Building, Dr. Alexis Faisis, a mechanical engineer at Solar Energy Hellas, explained
that incorporating quot;passive measuresquot; can eradicate the need to switch on energy-
consuming heaters or air conditioners in the first place. Effective design of home
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7. insulation, walls and windows can slash the amount of energy needed to heat and
cool by between 50% and 70%, he says.
quot;Passive systems save money, which can then be spent on the best possible active
energy system. If you take the right measures, you can afford photovoltaics,quot; notes
Faisis.
He believes that Energy Autonomous Buildings are quot;100% feasiblequot; in Israel but is
frank about the motives behind the development of such structures: quot;The designs are
not based on a client's ecological concerns; they are based on profitability. I'm sad to
say that money drives the world, and ecological concerns are a by-product of
economic benefits.quot;
In other words, saving the environment can also mean saving shekels. Olander, who
predicts that the price of water will rise in the near future, says that homeowners who
invest in making their property quot;greenquot; can recoup their outlay in four or five years.
quot;In my opinion, to build a green building in the long term will not cost more than the
price of an average building today,quot; he says. quot;Today we need to pay for experts or
trained architects, but in the future it will be something that every part of the team will
have knowledge of.quot;
If the predictions by Olander and others are to be believed, green housing in the future
might not be for environmental activists or the wealthy alone.
quot;A rich person can buy solar panels, but [the same goal can be reached by] reducing
the size of windows, changing the directions or shading buildings with trees,quot; says
Vital. quot;Not everything has to cost money. It's possible to be green by being clever.quot;
Credit: Michael Green
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