Israel’s leading investor Eytan Levy On Powering Up Middle East’s Sustainable Water Supply

Q: How do you think the region can leverage their existing assets to achieve a net-zero reality by 2050? 

A:  I think that this region is blessed in terms of power. Initially, it was oil and then natural gas and now sun and wind (that could help power the region). As the region is not too crowded and populated, there shouldn't be a problem to base the future energy on renewable energy and mainly on solar photovoltaic panels and other renewable technologies. I believe that the region shouldn't have a problem transforming to sustainable energy resources for the entirety of their needs. Oil-producing countries are already working on plans to develop processes that make them more energy-efficient and reduce their carbon footprint. Of course, they aspire to become net-zero, however, that might be almost impossible in today’s scenario. 

I think that the focus in this region should be given to water as it’s a limited natural resource in our region. Also, unlike energy, it's more difficult to move water from one area to another area. In energy, you just put the cable and you can generate power in Saudi Arabia and consume it in Syria without any problem, but if you want to transport water for thousands of kilometers, the cost of the energy, the cost of the pumping, is very high. That's why water is a local resource. Generally, you can move water in the range of a few hundreds of kilometres, but not more than this in open channels, if the geophysical conditions allow it. So, we must find other sources for water and increase the efficient use of this resource. 

Step one should be to use water at least twice. Each drop of water should be used twice, meaning after the use of water in the kitchen or in the industry, the second use should be irrigation. By using the water twice you, in fact, double the availability of water. Instead of having 1 million cubic meters per year, you have now almost 2 million cubic meters per year to be used. So, this is a major efficiency step that could be easily implemented. 

The second step would be to decentralize the water systems and treat water locally in small, decentralized plants. Over the past century, the tendency was to make large central facilities reach out to the whole region. The disadvantage is that you need to move the water to the same central facility which again is expensive. If you want to reuse the water, you need to move it back again to the origin, meaning twice the energy cost of pumping the water, which is very costly and makes it inefficient and uneconomical. 

The solution is therefore to switch to a distributed system, wherein the water is treated and then distributed locally. Past technologies made it difficult to control distributed facilities. However, with the advanced technology available today such high-tech sensors and communications equipment that enable real-time control of even very small facilities, even a house can treat its water and reuse it locally. And this can be controlled remotely or monitored remotely by the authorities. It can also be done automatically by AI, by machine learning. So, the authorities won’t need to allocate human resources to monitor those facilities.

In the future, I believe we no longer need huge power plants with very large stacks and generators. Both photovoltaic and wind energy will enable distributed power generation, thereby significantly reducing network losses on the transmission of the electricity in cables as well.

The more generation and management of water and energy can be taken down to the neighborhood level, the more efficient it becomes and the closer we get to the aspired, net-zero number.

Q: Where do you see the biggest power and water technology disruptors coming in from?

A: There are many advances in the water-technology industry. We now see advanced technology like AI entering this industry, making the water sector more digital. 

While the technology is available, the deployment is slow, because that is being done by utility companies which are very conservative by nature and slow to implement changes. I see future innovation coming from advanced biological treatment of wastewater, advanced filtration by membranes, efficient disinfection by ultraviolet light, which is made by the LED light source, advanced control of the water system by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

This can revolutionise the water industry. Added to this are advanced farming methods that enable the efficient reuse of water, and efficient use of fertilizers. Over-fertilizing fields pollute the water resources as they are toxic to the water resources. By deploying advanced sensors to monitor the quantity of fertilizer being used, we can ensure the protection and longevity of groundwater. Furthermore, imported chemical fertilisers could be replaced with organic fertilizers, in line with a circular economy. 

On the energy side, although PV panels are quite advanced, by developing new materials for the panels and making them bidirectional/ bifacial thereby increasing the quantity of power they generate, we can increase the overall efficiency of the PV panels. Ideally, we could from increase the efficiency from around 20% towards 30% efficiency in the energy conversion of the solar panel. Of course, wind energy is even more efficient in terms of cost as well. 

Over 20,000 people attended the Glasgow COP26 and most of them used airplanes to get there. It will take years to offset only the carbon used for the airplanes that brought those people to Glasgow. 

So, in the future, we'll have to include some sacrifices from the consumer side. Above all, we must be efficient in what we waste.

Q: Where do you see yourself and the companies that you're involved with helping address some of these issues with the net-zero agenda?

A: I'm fortunate to be focused on companies that are all dealing with environmental technologies throughout my career. When I started my career three decades ago, it wasn't an intentional choice. However, I was fortunate to get into it, and have been able to continue my work in the environmental technologies industry. One of Levy Ventures’ portfolio companies TEVET Water Technologies, for example, is producing liquid fertilizer from dairy farms wastewater. This fertilizer is being reused as a natural fertilizer to grow fodder for the livestock in a circular economy, exactly as I described before. 

Another portfolio company: Leakwise, manufactures advanced sensors to detect oil leaks on water, preventing large scale environmental disasters by providing an immediate alert once a leak is detected, thus minimizing the impact. 

So, with technologies like this, I continue to be involved in more and more companies in this space, especially within the water and wastewater industry that will help the world become more balanced and greener and closer to net zero, which we're all aiming at. I’m also happy to share my deep-seated experience in this journey and technical expertise with other companies and help them grow.