Lebanon’s Crises and the Need for Sustainable Solutions
For the fifth consecutive year, Lebanon remains mired in its financial and economic crisis and its repercussions, driven by worsening political divisions among the ruling factions that have escalated into a systemic crisis preventing the formulation of sustainable solutions to the crises battering the country and the containment of their fallout. Israeli attacks on Lebanon have further complicated the domestic situation and put the desired solutions out of reach, amid a presidential vacuum and a government whose role is restricted to caretaker duties, prolonging the crises in which the country is floundering.
Perhaps the gravest danger facing Lebanon is not merely the scale of its rampant crises, but the failure of those in charge of public affairs to pay due attention to the factor of time required to address them. Four years have already elapsed without any sign of solutions emerging that could curb the repercussions of these crises and chart ways to tackle their root causes, even though solutions require time frames to draft plans and programmes and subsequently implement them. Every delay in confronting these crises compounds their complexity and makes solutions harder and more costly.
It is no exaggeration to speak of multiple crises afflicting Lebanon rather than a single crisis, for the financial and economic crisis encapsulates a set of crises, each constituting a standalone crisis in its own right. Just as the approach to these crises must be new and innovative, it must also be comprehensive and simultaneous, given their interconnectedness and mutual impact. The foremost remedy must lie in halting the decay of state institutions and the erosion of their authority, because restoring the state’s regulatory role across various activities is the gateway to any solution and the guarantor of its success.
In this context, the implementation of the National Plan for the Sustainable Recovery of the Electricity Sector in Lebanon, approved in 2022, a plan that enabled Electricité du Liban to resume power generation, faces a challenge posed by successive thefts of high-voltage lines affecting the transmission and distribution grid across many Lebanese regions. The challenge lies in draining the utility and depriving it of financial savings, savings that had allowed it to settle part of its obligations toward the companies maintaining and operating power generation plants, particularly the Deir Ammar and Zahrani plants, in addition to arrears owed to service provider companies.
While Electricité du Liban seeks to invest its financial savings in boosting its production capacity and increasing supply hours, the successive thefts of transmission and distribution lines necessitate securing replacement lines to restore supply and ensure the sustainable distribution of generated power. This inflicts losses on Electricité du Liban, given the high prices of copper and other maintenance supplies. Moreover, it is the service provider companies that undertake the reconnection and maintenance of transmission lines on behalf of the utility, driving up the cost of such works.
Repeated thefts of transmission and distribution lines also prevent Electricité du Liban from adopting a fixed distribution schedule that lets consumers know the hours during which they can benefit from its output. Instead, the utility attempts to deter theft by keeping supply times unannounced, so as to prevent anyone tempted to tamper with the public grid from trying. These thefts cause power outages in the areas whose lines are stolen, destabilising the supply schedule and undermining fairness in distribution.
The challenge posed by the theft of transmission and distribution lines also obstructs the implementation of the "Distributed Renewable Energy Production Law", which allows private-sector investors to establish renewable energy generation plants with a capacity not exceeding 10 megawatts for solar power and 15 megawatts for wind power. Power generated at these plants is to be transmitted to consumers by connecting them to the public grid of Electricité du Liban, in return for a "wheeling fee" collected by the utility. The Lebanese Parliament passed the new law on December 14, 2023, under No. 318, with the aim of incentivising the use of both solar and wind renewable energy.
Furthermore, the instability of the public grid resulting from the theft of transmission and distribution lines prevents the activation of the "net metering" system stipulated in Law 318 mentioned above, which allows households generating renewable energy to sell their surplus output to the utility. The same applies to producers licensed under that same law, as the risks of theft hinder their use of the public grid to sell their generated energy output to willing consumers across various Lebanese regions.
It is worth noting that thefts are not the sole obstacle to implementing the Distributed Renewable Energy Production Law; another obstacle stems from foot-dragging in appointing the members of the Energy Sector Regulatory Authority, to which the new law (318/2023) entrusted the responsibility of approving the bulk of its implementation modalities. Electricity Sector Regulation Law No. 462/2002 approved the establishment of the regulatory authority nearly twenty-two years ago, yet political bickering has prevented the appointment of its members, leaving its powers in the hands of the Ministry of Energy and Water.
Article 4 of the Distributed Renewable Energy Production Law assigned seven tasks to the Energy Sector Regulatory Authority, foremost among them defining the eligible types of energy systems for connection to the public grid and the technical specifications for renewable energy systems, setting the maximum limit of generated electrical power permitted to be fed into and connected to the public grid, establishing the net metering system, setting the price ceiling per kilowatt-hour, and determining wheeling fees and payment methods. This leaves the law effectively suspended until the parties concerned agree on appointing the authority’s members.
From the foregoing, it becomes clear how vital it is for the functioning of the state and its agencies to proceed regularly in accordance with the laws in force, as a prerequisite for efforts to address the country’s crises to fulfil their purposes and achieve their objectives. Regularity in the functioning of the state begins with those in charge adhering to legal provisions and acting in accordance with their requirements; only then will every authority have its members appointed and every plan be implemented from start to finish. Indeed, the retreat of the rule of law, the laxity of its institutions in performing their duties, and the erosion of their authority have given violators free rein to persist in their violations, indifferent to the consequences of their actions and the harm they may inflict upon the nation and its citizens.
Translated from Arabic with AI. Read it in Arabic