No Sustainable Electricity for Lebanon Without Renewable Energy
As the dispute escalates between the ministers of economy and energy over the Qatari offer to supply Lebanon with a solar power plant capable of generating 100 megawatts of electricity, the Lebanese continue to suffer from the low number of hours of electrical power provided by Electricité du Liban. The irregularity of the supply and the failure to announce its schedule constitute an additional cause of their suffering, preventing citizens from making optimal use of the supply hours. Compounding citizens' hardship is the delay of nearly a year in issuing Electricité du Liban bills, leaving them easy prey to the greed of generator owners and their painful bills.
It is worth noting that the Qatari offer is not the first to be thwarted by the ruling forces; indeed, nearly a year ago they ignored a similar offer from Qatar to build three plants, not just one. The obstruction by the feuding ruling forces also extended to the offer by the Kuwaiti Arab Fund to finance the 2010 electricity plan, followed by the offer from Siemens to build power generation plants, as well as the Chinese offer for the same purpose.
The development of the electric power sector has faced setbacks and obstruction ever since reconstruction projects were launched after the war came to an end in the early 1990s. This obstruction, driven by political spite among the ruling forces, turned the electric power sector from a strategic utility providing operational energy to all economic sectors into an arena for settling political scores and sterile polemics among its factions.
Ironically, the development of the electric power sector coincided with the neglect of hydroelectric plants, both in terms of their maintenance and their upgrading, even though they met 70% of Lebanon's electricity needs until 1976. Development projects remained unable to achieve their intended goal, as seen with the Araman and Zahrani plants, which are equipped to run on natural gas whose use was limited to just a few months in 2009.
Stagnation also hit attempts to generate electricity from wind movement, owing to delays in amending Law 462/2002 and the subsequent inability to secure external financing because of the current crisis. That amendment ended Electricité du Liban's monopoly over electric power and granted the Council of Ministers the right to award licences temporarily for a period of two years. The licences went to "Sustainable Akkar", "Lebanon Wind Power", and "Hawa Akkar", with a combined capacity of 200 megawatts, pursuant to Decision No. 43 dated 2 November 2017.
The laws governing the energy sector have remained a dead letter, starting with Law 462/2002 (regulation of the electricity sector), Law 48/2017 (regulation of public-private partnerships), and Law 318/2023 (the Distributed Renewable Energy Production Law). This is due to the refusal of successive energy ministers to abide by the provisions of the electricity sector regulation law regarding the establishment of the regulatory authority, which is also vested with the powers to implement many provisions of the Distributed Renewable Energy Production Law passed at the end of 2023.
The state's policy of keeping the price per kilowatt-hour below its true cost was the direct reason why Lebanese citizens, even the financially well-off among them, showed no interest in adopting renewable energy. Another factor was the absence of programmes incentivising individuals and institutions to transition to renewable energy, despite its advantages in terms of sustainability and reasonable cost. This occurred while Electricité du Liban was accumulating ever more public debt to purchase fuel oil to operate and maintain its plants, without managing to recover more than a limited fraction of those costs.
At a time when the financial and economic crisis that struck Lebanon, and still persists, ought to have served as a catalyst for those in charge of the electricity sector to adopt new approaches to resolving the crisis of sustainable power supply, the Ministry of Energy proposed in February 2023 the construction of three additional fossil-fuel power plants, even as it remains unable to secure the operating costs of the existing plants.
That proposal came at a time when solar electricity generation had risen to nearly 1,500 megawatts, leaving Lebanon's electricity needs limited to 1,700 megawatts, whereas the capacity of currently operating generation plants reaches 2,000 megawatts. Furthermore, by a Council of Ministers decision dated 12 May 2022, upon the proposal of the Minister of Energy, 11 licences were granted to generate electricity exclusively from solar power with a production capacity of up to 165 megawatts, with production scheduled to begin within three years.
Meanwhile, the latest electricity plan faces politically driven obstacles that compound the difficulties of realising it and prevent its development toward providing sustainable electricity. Notably, this plan was confined to addressing the generation and distribution of electricity produced by Electricité du Liban's thermal plants, excluding other sources that could complement one another to achieve a greater number of supply hours.
The setbacks and obstacles that have impeded and continue to impede the development of the electric power sector call for an integrated plan adopted by the Lebanese government. Such a plan must be discussed as widely as possible by civil society, along the lines of the commendable discussion seminar held by the Progressive Socialist Party this past 29 May on the occasion of its diamond jubilee under the title "The Water and Alternative Energy File". Seminars of this kind make it possible to raise citizens' awareness of the importance of alternative energy and acquaint stakeholders with all aspects of the energy sector crisis and ways to address it.
The prospective plan must rest on national resources, particularly river and sea water, wind movement, and sunlight, in addition to the currently operating hydroelectric and thermal plants and even private generators. The plan must also include generating electricity from solid waste treatment, which would contribute to solving the waste crisis while producing electricity at the same time.
Indeed, amid the financial crisis in which Lebanon is floundering, it has become difficult to find suitable sources of financing for investment in the energy sector. This requires activating the Public-Private Partnership Law and working to encourage investment in renewable and clean energy.
The path toward resolving the electric power crisis begins with establishing good governance and applying the principle of accountability, since officials' compliance with legal provisions and commitment to implementing them are prerequisites for the success of any future plan, alongside achieving the security and political stability that are indispensable for attracting new investments. The steps that must be taken to solve the electricity crisis can be summarised as follows:
- Preventing encroachments on transmission and distribution lines and electricity theft, and imposing the severest penalties on perpetrators. - Maintaining hydroelectric plants, working to upgrade them, and building new hydroelectric plants using modern technologies that do not require high water pressure. - Incentivising municipalities and private generator owners to contribute to establishing solar power plants for electricity generation. - Reviewing the price per kilowatt generated from solar energy that Electricité du Liban purchases from individual producers, in order to encourage them to produce the largest amount of electricity. - Treating existing landfills to harness methane gas emissions for power generation, on the model of the Naameh landfill, to prevent these landfills from exploding and to curb their environmental hazards. - Building solid waste treatment plants using technologies that allow both electricity generation and waste disposal at the same time. - Granting all possible guarantees and facilities to wind energy projects so as to help diversify electricity sources and sustain supply. - Securing natural gas to operate the Araman and Zahrani plants, thereby helping lower production costs and ease the burden on citizens. - Accelerating the issuance of Electricité du Liban bills, allowing consumers to monitor and rationalise their consumption.
Beyond this, setting public services right, including ensuring a sustainable supply of electric power, requires putting an end to those in charge of these services treating them as sectarian or political fiefdoms of their own. These services are a citizen's right owed by the state, and it is the duty of everyone who assumes public office to do their utmost to provide them in the best manner, at the lowest cost, and in a timely fashion.
The financial and economic crisis from whose repercussions every Lebanese suffers must not deter us, particularly public sector employees, from working earnestly to restore public administrations and institutions to active service and modernise them to keep pace with the spirit of the age before it is too late and regret is of no avail.
Translated from Arabic with AI. Read it in Arabic