Co-Founders Of Renewable Energy Tech Provider Win Israel Prize In Industry

March 8, 2018 | Yehuda and Yehudit Bronicki, founders of Ormat Technologies, were announced as the recipients of the 2018 Israel Prize in industry. The husband and wife pair are the co-founders of the Israeli alternative and renewable energy technology provider. The prize committee congratulated the pair, writing, ““Yehuda Bronicki, a visionary, an inventor, born in Poland who survived the Holocaust and together with his wife, Dita Bronicki, one of the first businesswomen and female entrepreneurs in Israel – a pioneer in her field – jointly established the Ormat Group and made it a world leader in geothermal energy,” the Jerusalem Post reports. Founded in 1965 by the Bronickis, Ormat Technologies went public in 2004 and the Bronickis retired in 2014. The company provides renewable energy sources in the United States and around the world. The Israel Prize committee has faced some criticism for their choice of winners this year, as Yehudit Bronicki is the first and only female winner of the 2018 Israel Prize among the 11 winners that have been announced to date. The lack of female laureates have received disapproval from former MKs like Meirav Michaeli and Shelly Yechimovitch of the Zionist Union party. Two winners have yet to be announced.