A Solar Vision for Gaza?
A Solar Vision for Gaza?
by Kay Wood
Gaza had an energy crisis before the recent massively destructive encounter with Israel destroyed much of its centrally generated power infrastructure. One proposed solution to this crisis that has been floated in the past involved solar energy. Studies about how to bring this about were underway before the recent vast destruction
Now, in changed circumstances, solar might not only help bring power back to Gaza, it could become the basis of Gaza's future economic development. Here, in brief, is how this could work:
While year round sunny Gaza is obviously solar friendly, the cost of solar PV units that could be placed on buildings have put solar PV out of reach of the great majority of Gazans. Soon, though, billions of dollars of outside reconstruction aid will begin pouring in to Gaza. A big chunk of it could go toward solar unit purchases. Very highly decentralized, most of these would not be destroyed in any future conflict, assuring donors their contributions here would not again become rubble. Nor would such imports have obvious military use, therefore they would be unlikely to be blocked for security concerns.
That is just step one in the solarization of Gaza, however. The next step is to make Gaza a center of solar manufacture. Not for PV, perhaps, for a variety of technical and materials reasons, but for simple and inexpensive solar water heating equipment.
Beyond this, Gaza might be made into a center of solar education, research and development, with perhaps a specialty in solar linked water purification. What would come out of this would be something of the greatest economic value, the least threat to a neighbor, and impossible to destroy with bombs — ideas and patents.
Such an endeavor might even help calm hostilities if people in Gaza feel they have something with enormous future potential. And perhaps it could even create a pattern of best practices to help people in other hard hit or impoverished areas of the globe.
Without a vision of the future that transcends endless repeats of the past we are eyeless in Gaza. The above is thus perhaps a vision worth pursuing. Certainly one worth exploring.
***
Kay Wood is the author of an environmental graphic novel, The Big Belch.
