Israel, as part of its commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention, has issued several government resolutions to stimulate Israeli technological innovation and harnessing the high-tech industry to combat climate change problem and meet national goals. As a result, a report focusing on climate technologies published by an inter-ministerial team has provided recommendations, an action plan, and a set of goals. These goals are as follows: (1) to accelerate the development of the Israeli climate technology ecosystem (climate-tech); and (2) to mobilize those technologies to help achieve the goal of reducing emissions.

Climate-tech is not one distinct sector in the high-tech industry, but represents the collection of technologies that provide a direct or indirect solution for reducing emissions and stabilizing the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (mitigation) and improving conditions associated with climate change already in the atmosphere (adaptation). However, a lack of a congruent definition of climate-tech has created difficulties when drafting and implementing policies such as the inclusion of overlapping sectors; the need to design flexible solutions that meet the needs of those sectors efficiently; and to track costs and results. Therefore, a consistent, data-driven definition is now needed in order to facilitate meaningful policy, regulatory, financial and market interventions.

This work presents a holistic methodology starting from the definition of climate-tech while characterizing the sectors and sub-sectors included in it. The analysis of a specific sub-sector included in the definition for the purpose of supporting policy decision-making. The methodology begins with insights into the relative advantages and opportunities that Israel has in relation to the world in the development of the sub-sector.

The work then go’s on to identify representative companies in the precision agriculture sub-sector and conduct in-depth ideas in order to gauge the difficulties they face and prevent the full potential. Based on all of these insights, recommendations can be made to the government as a whole, and to the Innovation Authority in particular, which works with the goal of promoting climate-tech in Israeli high-tech, something that will require the Innovation Authority to amend some of its tools, approaches and definitions, especially on the policy tools necessary to utilize the potential inherent in each sector in general and the sub-sector in particular. It is important to note that the potential and challenges of the subsector are dynamic and change over time. Therefore, this methodology must be repeated once every two or three years or as needed to make sure that the insights are still valid.

In conclusion, this methodology was developed as part of a broader program of the Innovation Authority, which maps all sectors and sub-sectors in climate-tech in a methodical way. As part of this work, you will delve deeper into additional sub-sectors, which will be chosen according to their potential. This methodology can also contribute to other ministries that support the development of climate-tech in Israel – and to cooperation between them and the market, in order to promote climate-tech while focusing the effort in the right places.