Israel's first president, David Ben Gurion, retired to Sde Boker in 1963, determined to help fulfill his Zionist dream of “making the Negev bloom.” Over four decades later, Jews from Israel and abroad are achieving this dream by building solar homes for families in the Negev. Toby Lewis, a Master's student in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, is one of them.

Lewis came to Israel in late 2007 at the invitation of her advisor, widely acclaimed engineer Chaim Brown, to assist with the company he helped to found, REAL (Renewable Energy for Affordable Living) Housing. She was well-suited to the project, having served as the construction manager for The University of Colorado-Boulder's team in the Solar Decathlon, a semi-annual international competition between designers of small, solar-powered homes.

“The opportunity to move to Israel and take part in a project that, at its heart, is about supporting Israeli needs, was not one I could turn down,” says Lewis. The government views settlement of this region as a potential solution to mitigating overcrowding in the urban areas near Tel Aviv. Development of the Negev region, 60% of Israel's landmass but home to only 8% of its population, has proved essential to addressing key issues of Israeli quality of life. Without significant incentives, however, the draw to settle in southern Israel is minimal. The REAL Housing project aims to provide such incentives.

With Lewis as his construction manager, Brown is building an assembly plant for completely prefabricated solar homes that can be hauled to any destination in Israel. The houses are prepared in three sizes, making them suitable for students or young couples, small families and large families. In addition to creating these affordable, ready-made houses, the project is creating jobs. The group's first assembly plant, which has already produced a small prototype home, is located in a renovated former candle factory in Kibbutz Merav. Equipped to build 60 homes per month within a year, it has the capacity to employ over 100 workers. Since the group's aim of ultimately building 200 homes per month will necessitate the opening of more plants, it will also significantly expand the group's capacity to employ Israelis. REAL Housing currently plans to open five other factories in the Negev area, each with the potential to employ from 100 to 200 people.

According to Lewis, Brown, who made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) in 2003 with his wife, feels a “strong sense of obligation to create Israeli jobs and build affordable homes.” The professor believes that it is both possible and critical to combine these two goals with the use of renewable energy. Lewis seconds the viability and value of such a combination. She says, “One of the criteria at the Solar Decathlon was market viability, so there was a definite emphasis on the idea that an environmentally-friendly idea like solar homes can be mass producible and affordable, which I think is really important.”

Lewis contends that the consumer base for such houses is real, particularly in the Negev region. There, affordable housing serves as a primary draw for attracting new residents, and the sunny climate is optimal for the use of solar panels. Specifically, the company is negotiating a contract to build 60 solar homes for a student housing community just south of Be'er Sheva. They have also been taking orders for homes from Israelis who have been displaced from the West Bank as communities there have been dismantled. Lewis and Brown are eager to build a sustainable business with opportunities for placing houses all over Israel.

But Lewis describes a far more ambitious vision for the project: entire communities of solar homeowners, proving again that the environmentally-friendly solution is simultaneously economically-friendly. “Solar homes are more effective in numbers, because [building for a group] can cut down costs through mass production, as well as reducing the number of solar panels needed per house,” Lewis says. There is also is the added benefit of synergy: since an array of solar panels can often provide energy for more than one structure, communities connected on the same solar grid would be able to produce enough energy for communal structures such as schools, industries and synagogues at little to no extra cost.

Even without such communities, solar homes will financially benefit their owners. Impending legislation, expected to take effect within a few months, will encourage solar homeowners to connect their homes' solar panels to the existing electric grid and sell the solar energy to the Israeli Electric company. By allowing residents to sell this electricity, the legislation would grant anyone, with up to 4KV manufacturing ability by alternative energy, an exemption from income tax on up to 18,000 NIS, reports Real Housing VP of Development, Shaul Amir. Selling solar energy would contribute to the affordability of solar homes, which, if implemented in peripheral areas such as the Negev, would certainly serve as an asset to help the campaign to encourage settlement there.

“It's absolutely in the government's best interest to encourage a shift to independent renewable energy,” Lewis says of the imminent legislation. The government seems to agree, with plans to build two 250-Megawatt solar power stations in the Negev. According to Amir, the power stations are a state priority, although the date of their implementation is unknown. The REAL Housing project is determined to be a catalyst. “The Negev was chosen [as the focus of the project] in large part due to Ben Gurion's dream, but also because, despite a lot of government hype about investing in the Negev, not a lot of attention and emphasis has been placed in that region of the country,” says Lewis. “We wanted to be part of [that] change.”

Noa Levanon made aliyah almost five years ago, shortly after receiving a B.A. in English Literature from Princeton University. Having completed military service as an officer in the IDF's Liaison and Foreign Relations Division, she is now studying for a Master's degree in International Relations at Hebrew University.