Renewable Energy and Lebanon's Chronic Energy Problem
While countries around the world are working to harness renewable energy, whose share of total energy used is growing, yesterday's meeting at the Grand Serail stood out, bringing together a delegation from Électricité de France alongside the Lebanese prime minister and energy minister, with talk of a plan to build three new thermal power plants. This prompts one to ask whether those in charge of the Ministry of Energy are aware of the scale of renewable energy that the Lebanese have installed through individual initiatives as an alternative to cut-off state electricity and high-cost generator power. And one might ask whether the thermal power plants we already have, operating only partially for lack of funds to secure the fuel they require, are not enough without our adding three new plants to them today?
Even if hopes for "domestic gas production" are growing following the demarcation of the southern boundary of Lebanon's exclusive economic zone and the approaching start date for drilling in search of gas in Block 9, that does not justify seeking to build more plants when the capacity of existing plants exceeds 2,000 megawatts, and their utilization has never reached maximum capacity since their establishment. 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 necessary to operate thermal power plants. Notably, the transition to renewable energy is no longer confined to countries that lack oil and gas, but has rather become the goal of petroleum-producing nations, and examples abound.
While curbing global warming and climate change was 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 risks threatening human life caused by carbon dioxide emissions. The efforts of the nations that gathered in Paris at the end of 2015 culminated in an agreement within the framework of the United Nations to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable, low-carbon future.
The turn by developed countries toward clean and renewable energy, whose technologies have advanced and whose costs have fallen so as to increase the economic viability of its use, was reinforced by the Russian-Ukrainian war, which upended the stability of oil and gas markets and drove prices rapidly higher. Clean and renewable energy today accounts for nearly 29% of total energy consumed worldwide, a share poised to rise year after year as 2050 approaches, the target date for achieving the zero-emissions goal 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, even though Lebanon is in direst need of reducing its import bill for petroleum derivatives used to generate electric power. This is despite the fact that Lebanon has had hydroelectric power plants since the 1960s, the greater part of which require rehabilitation, enjoys three hundred sunny days throughout the year, and has wind speeds that allow for electricity generation, especially in the north.
Keeping the state's price per kilowatt-hour below its true cost on the one hand, and the absence of programs incentivizing individuals and institutions to shift to renewable energy on the other, were the direct reason for the lack of interest among the Lebanese, even the financially well-off among them, in transitioning to renewable energy despite its advantages in sustainability and reasonable cost. Meanwhile, the state was accumulating ever more public debt to purchase fuel oil to run the plants and carry out maintenance work, without managing to recover more than a limited proportion of those costs.
After Lebanese uptake of renewable energy, and solar power in particular, had remained modest until 2020, with the pace of solar electricity generation limited to the equivalent of 100 megawatts over ten years starting in 2010, this pace rose in 2021 with the addition of 100 megawatts, while in 2022 nearly 250 megawatts were likely added to previous capacity, bringing the total to roughly 450 megawatts, equivalent to the volume of production promised to us by the second phase of the Ministry of Energy's plan in its latest version distributed across three phases.
The renewable energy from which Lebanon can benefit is not limited to solar power, but extends beyond it to biomass, specifically waste, of which Lebanon produces around 4,000 tons daily, equivalent to 1.381 million tons annually, representing untapped raw materials and a source of renewable fuel. At the same time, the management of this waste is confined to burying it in landfills that can no longer accommodate more of it, alongside the hazards that landfilling poses to the environment and public safety. Meanwhile, failure to treat this waste and harness it to generate electric power increases financial burdens and the 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 produced from generators running on methane gas emitted by the landfill and supplied surrounding villages, had the shortcomings of the responsible administration not led to a halt in production. While the Tripoli landfill, and likewise the Bourj Hammoud landfill, threaten an environmental catastrophe even as the area surrounding them is starved of electric power, that very same administration drags its feet in seeking to benefit from the emissions of these landfills by providing electric power to nearby areas and reducing the fuel oil bill that has exhausted the treasury. Notably, waste-to-energy plants in Europe generated around 40 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 90 billion kilowatt-hours of heat during 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 electric power generation from which Lebanon has suffered since the infamous civil war came to an end in 1991, without adopting renewable energy as a primary source of electric power alongside existing sources. After all this stagnation and the haphazard plans plaguing the power generation sector, it is imperative to change the mindset with which the sector has been managed for more than a quarter of a century, and to take into account the global trends and technological developments that have emerged while the dust of political conflict on the one hand, and administrative corruption on the other, blinded the foresight of officials.
Translated from Arabic with AI. Read it in Arabic