Where Lebanon Stands on Clean and Renewable Energy
While countries around the world work to harness renewable energy, whose share of total energy consumption continues to grow, yesterday's meeting at the Grand Serail, which brought together the Lebanese prime minister and energy minister with a delegation from Électricité de France, stood out for talk of a plan to build three new thermal power plants. This raises the question of whether those in charge of the Ministry of Energy are aware of the scale of renewable energy that Lebanese citizens have installed through individual initiatives as an alternative to cut-off state electricity and high-cost generator power. One might reasonably ask whether our existing thermal power plants, operating only partially for lack of funds to secure the fuel they need, are not already enough without adding three new plants today?
Even if hopes are growing for "domestic gas production" following the demarcation of the southern boundary of Lebanon's exclusive economic zone and the approaching start of exploratory gas drilling in Block 9, that does not justify seeking to build more plants when the capacity of existing ones exceeds 2,000 megawatts and their operation has never reached full capacity since they were built. Accordingly, realistic management of the energy portfolio requires turning to alternative sources, especially renewables, given the constant need for unavailable financing to import the fuel oil required to run thermal plants. Notably, the transition to renewable energy is no longer confined to countries lacking oil and gas, but has become a goal of oil-producing nations as well, with examples abounding.
Whereas curbing global warming and climate change was originally the driver behind this choice, this shift has become an urgent economic imperative owing to the volatility of oil and gas prices, in addition to the global warming and life-threatening risks caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The efforts of countries that gathered in Paris at the end of 2015 culminated in a United Nations agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable, low-carbon future.
The shift by developed nations toward clean and renewable energy, whose technologies have advanced and whose costs have fallen to make its use more economically viable, was reinforced by the Russian-Ukrainian war, which upended the stability of oil and gas markets and sent prices soaring. Clean and renewable energy today accounts for nearly 29% of total global energy consumption, a share poised to rise year after year as the world approaches 2050, the target date for achieving zero emissions through the use of clean and renewable energy.
It is worth noting that Lebanon, which is among the signatories to the climate change agreement under which it pledged that renewable energy would contribute 12% of Lebanon's total energy consumption by 2020 and reach 30% in 2030, has achieved only a tiny fraction of this target, even though Lebanon is in dire need of reducing its import bill for petroleum derivatives used to generate electricity. Moreover, Lebanon has had hydroelectric power plants since the 1960s, the bulk of which require rehabilitation, enjoys three hundred sunny days a year, and has wind speeds capable of generating electricity, particularly in the north.
Keeping the state tariff per kilowatt-hour below its true cost on the one hand, and the absence of programmes incentivising individuals and institutions to switch to renewable energy on the other, were the direct causes of the lack of interest among Lebanese, even the financially well-off, in transitioning to renewable energy despite its advantages in sustainability and reasonable cost. Meanwhile, the state kept accumulating further public debt to buy fuel oil to run the plants and carry out maintenance, while managing to recover only a limited share of those costs.
After Lebanese uptake of renewable energy, especially solar power, remained modest until 2020, with solar electricity generation limited to the equivalent of 100 megawatts over ten years starting in 2010, the pace picked up in 2021 with the addition of 100 megawatts, while in 2022 approximately 250 megawatts were likely added to existing capacity, bringing the total to around 450 megawatts, equivalent to the production volume promised by the second phase of the Ministry of Energy's latest three-phase plan.
The renewable energy from which Lebanon could benefit is not limited to solar power, but extends to biomass, specifically waste, of which Lebanon generates around 4,000 tons per day, equivalent to 1.381 million tons per year, representing untapped raw material and a source of renewable fuel. Yet management of this waste is confined to burying it in landfills that can no longer hold any more, with all the hazards that landfilling poses to the environment and public safety. Meanwhile, failing to process this waste and use it to generate electricity increases financial burdens and public debt and allows the environmental massacre and its health repercussions to continue.
Lebanon could have built upon the experience of the Naameh landfill, where electricity was generated from generators running on methane gas emitted by the landfill and supplied surrounding villages, had the incompetence of the responsible administration not brought production to a halt. While the Tripoli landfill, and likewise the Bourj Hammoud landfill, threaten an environmental catastrophe even as their surrounding areas are starved for electricity, that very same administration drags its feet in seeking to harness emissions from these landfills to supply electricity to neighbouring areas and reduce the fuel oil bill that has exhausted the treasury. By comparison, waste-to-energy plants in Europe generated around 40 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 90 billion kilowatt-hours of heat in 2018, supplying 18 million citizens with electricity and heating 15.2 million citizens.
In light of the above, there can be no talk of plans to address the severe shortage in electricity generation from which Lebanon has suffered since the notorious civil war came to an end in 1991 without adopting renewable energy as a primary source of electricity alongside existing sources. After all the stagnation and haphazard planning that have plagued the power generation sector, it is imperative to change the mindset with which the sector has been run for more than a quarter of a century, and to take into account the global trends and technological advances that emerged while the dust of political conflict on the one hand, and administrative corruption on the other, blinded officials.
Translated from Arabic with AI. Read it in Arabic