AMMAN — Ministers from Jordan, Israel, and the UAE
are expected to sign an energy-for-water mega deal on Monday in Dubai; one that
has been in the works for years, according to an
Axios report. The project has
been pushed by US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and aims to
build a massive solar farm in the Jordanian desert that will generate clean
energy to be sold to Israel in return for desalinated water.
اضافة اعلان
The agreement states that Jordan and Israel will help each
other deal with the challenges of climate change. Jordan has been witnessing
acute drinking and irrigation water shortage due to poor rainy seasons, with
half of its 14 dams reportedly completely dry. The UAE will finance the solar
farm that will provide clean energy to Israel, which in turn will build a
desalination plant on the Mediterranean coast to provide water to Jordan.
According to Axios the solar farm will be built by Masdar, a
UAE government-owned alternative energy company. The plans call for the solar
farm to be operational by 2026 and produce 2 percent of Israel's energy by
2030, with Israel paying $180 million per year to be divided between the
Jordanian government and the Emirati company.
If carried out it will be the biggest regional cooperation
project ever undertaken between Israel and Jordan since signing the peace
treaty more than 25 years ago. In 2014, Jordan and Israel signed a $10 billion,
15-year deal, to buy Israeli natural gas. Israel began supplying natural gas to
Jordan last year. Also due to water shortage Jordan bought 100 million cubic
meters of water from Israel this year in addition to the 55 million cubic
meters that it gets under the 1994 peace treaty. Jordan needs an estimated 1.3
billion cubic meters of water annually for various uses.
Strategic relations between Jordan and Israel have improved
significantly since Naftali Bennett replaced Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s
prime minister, according to Axios.
The idea for the project was first proposed by
EcoPeace Middle East, an NGO that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli
environmentalists whose objective is the promotion of cooperation to protect
environmental heritage. Head of the Amman office, Yana Abu Taleb, told
Jordan
News that the organization had shared a prefeasibility study of the project in
2017 with the concerned governments and other relevant stakeholders, but was
not party to intergovernmental negotiations. She added that tensions between
Jordan and Israel with the former Israeli government had put the project on
hold.
The reasoning behind the proposed project was that Israel
needs renewable energy but lacks the land for massive solar farms, which Jordan
has. Meanwhile, Jordan needs water but can only build desalination plants in
the remote southern part of the country, while Israel's coastline is closer to
Jordan’s major population centers.
Jordan News tried to get confirmation from government
sources, including the ministries of water, energy, and foreign affairs but
none had any information on the project.
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