Bypass route: The Ministry of Finance demands the abolition of the obligations applicable to electricity producers under the Clean Air Act, the law that reduces the emissions of local air pollutants that cause illness and about 2400 premature deaths per year. In the draft Arrangements Law as published yesterday (Tuesday), it was stated contrary to the position of the professionals in the Ministry of Environmental Protection, that the director of the electricity system and the energy minister could allow the holder of an electricity generation license to operate in violation of the Clean Air Act. .
● Israel is delaying the closure of the coal-fired units. Guess who pays the price
In practice, this is a de facto repeal of the Clean Air Law – the most important environmental law enacted in Israel, which limits the ability of factories to emit life-threatening pollutants. According to a report by the Ministry of Environmental Protection from 2018, the reduction in pollutant emissions in industry and the electricity economy due to the legislation, saved NIS 115 billion in a decade, of which NIS 100 billion was from reducing air pollutants at IEC coal-fired power plants.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection claims that the repeal of the law could lead to a “slippery slope” of similar requests
The background to this is the recent refusal of the Ministry of Environmental Protection to request the IEC to extend the closing date of coal-fired units 1-4 in Orot Rabin by 11-20 months, when the original date was set for June 2022. The IEC recently asked the Ministry of Environmental Protection to extend the company The burning of coal to generate electricity, and even added that they purchased a stockpile of much sulfur-rich and polluting coal from the standard, due to the Russian attack in Ukraine and their inability to meet deadlines set by the government for closing coal units, due to supply and power grid problems. To the environment, it means compromising the reliability of the power supply. It should be emphasized that the emission permit does not prevent the units from operating in the event of a damage to the power supply already today.
The Orot Rabin power plant is the largest air pollutant in Israel. Units 1-4 are heated by coal, and do not include suitable facilities for reducing emissions of hazardous pollutants into the air. Air pollutants emitted from power plants are mainly sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons including polyaromatic substances and dioxins / pores, particles, including metal particles and more. The health effects that can be caused by exposure to these air pollutants are significant and dangerous, from lung diseases, cancer, asthma and premature death.
The damage to external health-environmental costs as a result of pollutant emissions from these units is estimated at no less than NIS 2.7 billion per year, including greenhouse gas emissions. The cost of each day when units 1-4 do not close amounts to more than NIS 8 million for the four units. The Ministry of Environmental Protection says that “these data indicate the urgency in closing the units, as promised by all parties, and the acute damage to public health.”
Naturally, the Ministry of Finance did not coordinate the move with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, in which the professionals discovered the things from the published draft. The Ministry of Environmental Protection clarifies that the practical meaning of the Finance requirement in the Arrangements Law is to grant an exemption to the IEC and all private electricity producers from the provisions of the Clean Air Act, while ignoring the health and environmental damages. The Minister of Environmental Protection, Tamar Zandberg, announced that she would not agree to circumvent the law and would not allow it to advance within the framework of the Arrangements Law.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection claims that the abolition of the Clean Air Law in the electricity sector may even lead to a “slippery slope” of similar requests in the private sector, so that the IEC, which did not act resolutely to meet the deadlines, Most in the economy – BZN, EPA and others – also demand exemption from the law, under the auspices of economic regulators. In this context, it is worth noting that those regulators tend to mobilize in a defiant manner alongside polluting companies, while fighting for the environmental and health interest within the government.
In the previous decade, the Ministry of Finance also opposed the enactment of the Clean Air Law, thus standing by the polluting bodies in the economy. Last year, the Ministry of Finance even succeeded in reducing the powers of the Ministry of Environmental Protection as part of the business licensing reform it underwent in the Arrangements Law.