Yosef Abramowitz President of Arava Power comes in at number 44. Israel's solar energy pioneer makes the list for the third year in a row, finding himself among good company alongside Vagina Monologues play write Eve Ensler, Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Arava Power Company co-founder Yosef Abramowitz

Over the past year, Israel’s legendary “Captain Sunshine” Yosef Abramowitz has upgraded his vision of simply creating a solar powered Jewish state to harnessing energy from the sun’s rays for the vaster developing world.

As an immigrant to Israel from Boston, Abramowitz, 49, co-founded the Arava Power Company in 2006 with Ed Hofland and David Rosenblatt, bringing about the establishment of Israel’s first medium-sized solar field in 2011, at Kibbutz Ketura.

While Arava Power continues to expand a series of Israeli solar projects in the pipeline – including a large solar field across the street from Ketura and a medium-sized field in a Negev Beduin community – Abramowitz and his partners decided to aim beyond the state’s borders. In October, they launched the Jerusalem-based firm Energiya Global, which is already developing a utility-scale photovoltaic facility at Rwanda’s Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, a commercial solar field in the Galapagos island of San Cristobal and an eight-megawatt site in Romania.

Recognizing his status as an American-Israeli solar pioneer, CNN named him one of six global green pioneers in 2012, and a 30-minute program on his life was featured on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s The Next Last series earlier this month.