Court petitioned against ‘deadly’ lifeline granted to coal-fired power station

Predicting multiple deaths from pollution, Sharon-Carmel Cities Association, green NGOs, claim amended emissions permit violates Israeli law, European directives

The Sharon-Carmel Cities Association for Environmental Quality, representing 19 local authorities and around a million residents, filed an administrative petition in the Jerusalem District Court on Sunday demanding the immediate cancellation of a recent amendment to the emissions permit for coal-fired units at the Orot Rabin power plant in Hadera, in central Israel.

A similar petition was submitted last week by the environmental NGOs Green Course and Home Guardians.

Orot Rabin, with its distinctive chimneys, comprises six coal-fired units and two gas-fired units, the latter with their own emissions permit.

Of the six coal-fired units, four (units one to four) were never fitted with the filtration units known as scrubbers, which are standard in Western European plants.

Units one to four were supposed to close at the end of 2025. Then, in October 2025, the Energy Minister instead decided to extend their operations until 2028, allowing up to 500 hours of operation annually to cover exceptional and emergency situations.

The backdrop to that decision was the temporary closure of the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields after the start of the Gaza war, sparked by the deadly Hamas invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the shuttering of the Leviathan and Karish gas fields during the 12-day war with Iran last year. Gas from the three fields supplies over 70 percent of Israel’s power.

Academic surveys over the past 25 years have linked coal pollution from the facility to between 50 and 250 annual premature deaths in the region. The former, and most recent, figure was reached by then Health Ministry director general Itamar Grotto in 2016.

The association’s petition, against the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Israel Electric Company, slammed the unit’s continued operation as a severe violation of the Clean Air Act and binding European directives.

It said the Environmental Protection Ministry should either have refused to issue a new emissions permit, or at least should have conditioned any continued operation on the installation of scrubbers, with a timetable for doing so.

It further criticized the ministry for allowing the units to use lower-quality coal, for relaxing the emissions rules relative to previous permits, and for allowing increases in emissions that far exceed limits set by European directives. For example, while the European directive allows sulfur dioxide emissions of 150 micrograms per cubic meter, the amended permit for Orot Rabin allows 1400 micrograms per cubic meter.

In an expert opinion attached to the petition, toxicologist Dr. Ofir Lavon stated that coal burning was directly linked to childhood asthma, acute respiratory hospitalizations, strokes, and accelerated neurodegenerative decline.

He wrote, “For the dozens of days in which the units are expected to operate using coal, we will see dozens of excess death cases a year (in addition to the thousands of premature death cases related to air pollution each year in Israel). Furthermore, in each year in which the coal units are operated at the planned scope, dozens or more new diagnoses of heart, vascular, stroke, lung, and dementia diseases are expected, along with an increase of several hundred emergency room visits or acute hospitalizations of all severities due to heart, vascular, and respiratory problems. A certain increase is expected, which is difficult to quantify precisely, in the number of complications in pregnancies of the women in the area (premature births, miscarriages, and low-weight fetuses).”

In October, Yves Yakobovski, a member of Hadera City Council, told the Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee that in the Hefsiba neighborhood, “people hang laundry out and it turns black in a few minutes. The houses and cars are covered in coal dust.”

“We can only imagine what it does for their lungs, their life expectancy,” he added.