"The Israeli economy makes effective use of energy, but it's relatively pollutant, so we have a bigger incentive to search for alternative energy sources," Prof. Eugene Kandel, head of the National Economic Council at the Prime Minister's Office told visitors at the Eilat conference on renewable energy, Thursday. Addressing the government's energy goals, he added: "The world is undergoing significant changes and that creates challenges. Israel has been dealing with these challenges for years and we are well-equipped to do so." Kandel praised the growing awareness in Israel to the fields of clean and renewable energy: "There are technological improvements in the field of renewable energy and a lot of Israeli research and innovation." Speaking of a recent government decision to make renewable energy 10% of Israel's power market by 2020, he noted that "The problem is that in the absence of a (previous) figure, we can't know how much we need to subsidize or how much money the technology can save. "Also, no industry can survive on subsidies forever," he added. "We have to decide on the extent of the subsidies by the time the technology matures." Kandel added that the government will soon issue a report in which it will pledge to cut emission levels by 20% by 2020. "From a regulatory perspective it's important to have innovation-driven support. We think that there is a great potential to develop an Israeli growth engine and enhance the standards applied to the production of cleaner energy," he said Monique Barbut, CEO of Global Environment Facility, who also attended the conference, added that despite the fact that efficient energy consumption has proven to increase business and industries' profit, banks worldwide still fail to see it as truly economically-viable. "It's become one of our main issues," she added. "We have many complex projects that require not only funding but technology as well. We want to pursue partnerships with Israeli companies so we can promote these technologies in an advancing world." The Eilat conference on renewable energy hosted some 300 participants from all over the world. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter