Today we understand the shifts in technology, individual behavior and government policy that would avert disastrous climate change. Among the key questions that governments, industry and international organizations are asking is: how do we mobilize the science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship to develop and implement solutions to problems that are caused by doing business as usual?
Twentieth Century science was revolutionized by the contributions of Jewish thinkers. Moreover, Israel’s world-leading high-tech economy testifies to our ability to transform cutting-edge science into profitable enterprises. Israeli scientists and entrepreneurs already have a proven track record in the fields of clean technology that must be developed to tackle the threat of global warming.
The primary goal of Jewish Climate Initiative’s Innovation Program is to leverage this scientific expertise and entrepreneurial energy, both in Israel and the Diaspora, by promoting inter-disciplinary research, development and application of new innovative technologies.
Substantive Areas of Research.
Climate change calls upon science to understand the profound impact of human progress on the ability of the earth to continue to provide a sustaining and supportive environment for human life. Technology has contributed to the crisis itself, yet we must turn to science to find solutions, to reduce impacts of warming, to adapt to those impacts and finally to offer new technologies that can help create an economy based on widely distributed abundance and not on scarcity.
Jewish Climate Initiative will fund collaborative R&D, between and within academy and industry for innovative, novel scientific solutions and technologies:
- to alleviate and reduce the impact of climate change and global warming;
- develop efficient, distributed renewable energy sources;
- energy efficiency, and energy storage;
- carbon sequestration;
- adaptive strategies and the building of adaptive capacities to the impacts of climate change;
- emergency response systems to impact events;
The R&D program will stimulate international, interdisciplinary collaboration by researchers from academia, and industry in virtual global R&D consortia, with a requirement of one or more research participants (academic or industrial) from Israel
Jewish Climate Initiative posits the following Five Year Goals for its research and development grants program:
- Compete for and win the $25M Earth Challenge (Gore/Branson) prize, (to be awarded for a major technological breakthrough that will substantially ameliorate global warming.)
- Develop a viable carbon sequestration technology by year 2012 that would make a significant contribution to the reduction of CO2 emissions from stationary sources or reduction in the concentration of atmospheric carbon.
- Develop an Adaptive Capacity (local sustainability for agriculture/water/energy) “tool-kit” – to support climate change impacts rapid response, recovery and adaptation to changed circumstances.
Entrepreneurship and Transfer of Technology Program
Jewish Climate Initiative recognizes the successful, globally-oriented, entrepreneurial start-up economy in Israel. It plans to tap this wealth of resourcefulness and dynamism to foster start-up for-profit enterprises, assisting their entry into existing Business and Technology incubators in Israel or other appropriate start-up frameworks.
Contributors to this program will receive a right of first refusal to participate in any for-profit enterprises for their personal account.
- Start-ups based on the creation of international emergency response technologies.
- Carbon sequestration and reduction technologies.
- Water technologies.
- Alternative energy and energy efficiency related technologies, such as, concentrated PV, smart-grid software, etc.
- Innovative climate change services.
In pursuing its Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer Program, Jewish Climate Initiative will partner with Venture Capital firms to secure matching capital for new enterprises. In addition, Jewish Climate Initiative will actively assist in the transfer of any successfully developed technologies to industry for development and application on the basis of licensing agreements.
Jewish Climate Initiative has set as its goals for the Entrepreneurship and Tech Transfer Program:
- Licensing of one technology per year from sponsored R&D to industry.
- One start-up business in the first year, two in the second, etc.