The Knesset is an imposing rectangular building standing at the top of a hill from where it looms over one side of Jerusalem. Despite the blinding summer sun, the tapestries by Marc Chagall decorating the entrance of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are awash in a far gentler, natural light.

The bay windows on either side of the reception have recently been double glazed, designed to optimise thermal insulation, and fitted with filters to lesson the constant solar glare. The fixtures have been switched to hold energy-saving LED lighting.



“We want to be the greenest parliament in the world,” said Ronen Plot, director general and kingpin of the Green Knesset project which aims to transform the seat of Israeli politicians into a 100% eco-efficient building.



Emblem of energy transition

The biggest undertaking was installing a solar field on the roof of the Knesset, which measures 4,560 metres long and has an installed capacity of 450 kilowatts. Nor is the Knesset the first parliament to claim the idea of solar panels; however, its installation is larger than those of the Reichstag in Berlin, or the houses of parliament in Canberra, Australia. As it stands, it should be able to cover 10% of its electricity needs.



The solar roof is an emblem of the ecological transition taking place at the heart of the Israeli parliament, although it’s just one of many boxes to tick for the Green Knesset project, which began in early 2014. There are broadly 13 initiatives which cover three domains – electricity, water and paper. One of the measures currently in place is a haphazard structure of detectors which turn both the air conditiong or lights off when rooms are empty. The paper is 100% recycled and is systematically printed recto verso, and plastic bottles have been replaced with water jugs.



“It’s not just about techological changes but modifying the ways we work and function,” said Samuel Chayen, who is the technical coordinator of the project. The Israeli MPs are encouraged to work online rather than on paper, and each gets their own tablet to work on. The once-thick dossiers listing the ins and outs of the annual budget are no longer distributed, and have instead been made available in printed document versions on USB keys.



Recycling is far from becoming an Israeli habit, but staff at the Knesset are asked to separate their waste. The goings-on have also piqued interest abroad: in mid June, some 20 ambassadors and EU representatives visited the Knesset as part of a delegation to see how proceedings had gone.



Government inertia

The 13-point plan in the Green Knesset programme should all be up and running by 2016. €1.6m has been spent, which is calculated to be made back within five to seven years thanks to the energy which will be saved. “There’s an economic benefit to this, and we want the rest of the country to take a bet on sustainability too,” said Ronen Plot. “We’ll feel like we’ve reached our goal once other official buildings will have adopted similar practises to us.”



Nonetheless, ecologists warn of the risk about emphasising this form over what really matters – making changes happen for everyone. “These are praiseworthy efforts but they’ll stay as they are, decorating a roof, unless someone insists on pushing this as policy and passing environmental laws,” said Gidon Bromberg, Israel director of a regional association called EcoPeace Middle East. “Thanks to the inertia of the government, we are really behind when it comes to certain key policy areas such as renewable energy.” As it stands, renewable energy only comprises 2% of electricity in the Hebrew state.

Nor has Israel officially submitted its official climate pledge ahead of the UN climate summit taking place in Paris this December, and so we don’t know officially how it will fight climate change, unlike other countries which have precised their figures. In mid-July the environment minister indicated that the Hebrew state should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 30% by 2030 if it wanted to conform like other countries in the OECD.

A representative for the environmental organisation Adam Teva V’Din (Israel Union for Environment Defence) spoke out at the time, pointing out that Israeli president Shimon Peres had already committed to a reduction of 20% of Co2 emissions during the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. It’s a goal which has not been heeded.