Ammon News -

The electricity agreement between Israel and Jordan will witness having water being sold to the Jordanians at its market price, which is estimated to be 80¢ per cubic meter, Haaretz reported. In historical terms this is a very low price, which reflects the plummeting costs of desalinating water in Israel. The total financial scale of the agreement is estimated at $2.5 billion, according to Haaretz.

The difficulty in Israel with building desalination facilities or laying water pipelines is not the bidding process but finding available land – and without generating too much opposition from nearby local governments over the destruction of the view toward the Mediterranean shoreline. Building the additional facility will be no small challenge. The planning, the bidding process and the execution will take six to 10 years, according to estimates, and might require the enactment of a special law, similar to the legislation that was needed for the Tel Aviv Metro and, years back, for the Trans-Israel Highway, so that this sensitive project can be implemented quickly and without delays, as reported by Haaretz.

It also presents an additional challenge: Jordan needs water now – it can’t wait a decade. The Water Authority is therefore examining possibilities of increasing the amount supplied to Jordan, even prior to completion of the new facilities. That will probably be implemented via Lake Kinneret, perhaps by requiring all the desalination facilities in Israel to operate at full capacity year-round. The demand for water usually drops by about 30 percent in the winter, and transition to 100-percent production will make it possible to provide Jordan with water during that season, which they will have to store for the summer.

The project’s cost, to be covered by the UAE and Jordan, is estimated at $700 million, and it should be noted that the agreement doesn’t mention a price for the electricity that will be acquired. Until 2026 an ongoing mechanism to set the price of electricity (a wholesale market for electric power) will operate in Israel, and the Jordanians will receive the price that will be in effect in Israel during those hours of supply, as reported by Haaretz.