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CONFERENCE SPARKS PROGRESS TOWARD ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
American Jewish Congress

The inaugural leadership conference, "Cooperation for Energy Independence of Democracies in the 21st Century," was held in Jerusalem. One hundred and seventy attendees from 140 institutions and six countries participated, seventy from outside of Israel. Coming on the heels of a bus bombing in Jerusalem, the turnout was extraordinary, reflecting the seriousness of the issue and the commitment of the participants to do something about it. While the participants were overwhelmingly Israeli and American, others were from Turkey, Germany, Canada, and Britain.
Marquee attendees included former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, U.S. Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy board members Admiral Tom Gross and Dr. Robert Dixon, Minister of National Infrastructures Joseph Paritsky, Minister for Strategic Cooperation with the U.S. Uzi Landau, and Jack Rosen, President of the American Jewish Congress. Former U.S. Senator Rod Grams (R-Minnesota) was conference moderator.
The primary sponsors of the event were the American Jewish Congress and the U.S. Department of Energy. Other sponsors were Van Ness Feldman, ZAG/ S&W, Stuart Energy, Toyota, and Air Products.
Plenary topics were dependency on OPEC including its relationship to terrorism, and U.S. and Israeli capabilities in renewables. Separate tracks on transportation, international cooperation, economics, and efficiency-productivity were held. Topics which received the most attention were solar thermal, solar PV, hydrogen, fuel cells, and energy storage.
Besides the DOE, leading U.S. institutions which presented included three important national laboratories: Argonne National, Lawrence Berkeley, and National Renewable Energy. The Gas Technology Institute, USCAR, and RAND Corporation also presented.
Israeli institutions included the Technion, Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute of Science, Ben Gurion University, and Hebrew University, among others. Also attending was Dov Raviv, the "father" of the Arrow Missile. Numerous startup companies and labs presented posters or spoke.
In nearly all cases, the aforementioned institutions were represented by their top officials or leading researchers.
An immediate success story was the development of a collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory represented by Dr. Harvey Drucker and Dr. Izhak Etsion of Technion University in Israel and SurTech Surface Technologies. Dr. Etzion and his colleagues have, developed an exciting new technique to reduce friction. Argonne intends to provide $150,000 of developmental funds to evaluate their new technologies for coatings coupled to Dr. Etzion's methods for surface modification.
"The conference far exceeded my expectations, and set a terrific basis for moving forward toward legislation that will spawn real joint research and demonstration projects," said AJCongress Energy Independence Task Force Chairman Jack Halpern.
A Consensus Resolution was unanimously passed by the non-governmental participants, in expectation that the U.S. and Israeli governments will shortly follow suit. The resolution may be viewed on the conference website www.energycooperation.org.
Conference Director David Haberman was selected to oversee the post-conference Working Groups. The groups will include a Steering Committee, R&D Committee, and Demonstration/Validation Projects Committee.