Project, to be built on 600 dunams at Kibbutz Ketura, still faces objections from Finance Ministry.Construction of a 40-megawatt photovoltaic power plant in Kibbutz Ketura – the first large solar field in the country – was approved by the National Planning and Building Council on Wednesday morning.The plant is part of a nationwide effort to promote energy production through solar sources, the council announced.The field will be built by the Arava

Power Company on a 600-dunam (60 hectare) plot and will produce 2,200 hours of electricity per year, during daylight hours only, according to the council, which is a division of the Interior Ministry under the leadership of Dr. Shuki Armani.The council said that nature and agricultural areas would not be harmed in the building process.The electricity produced at the Arava’s photovoltaic field will pass through a transport line onto the Israel Electric Company’s national grid, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and shortening the electricity transport time to the city of Eilat, the council said.“The large field in Ketura constitutes a historical landmark in the local solar industry and will turn Israel into a country that benefits from a significant production of electricity from solar energy,” Jon Cohen, the CEO of Arava, said in a statement.“We expect and believe that the Israeli government will act quickly to deploy the resolution for large fields, which will enable the beginning of electricity production in the large field in Ketura,” he said.

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