Energy Policy and Security Program, December 2019
The energy sector in Lebanon is one of the key contributors to the current economic crisis, which has led to the unprecedented uprising and mobilization of the Lebanese public. Not only the sector’s widely perceived dysfunction, mismanagement, and corruption practices have fueled the public anger that has spread across the entire country since 17 October 2019, they have sent a negative signal about the seriousness of previous governments to implement reforms in the sector.
On November 12, 2019, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB organized a community dialogue on Lebanon’s energy future, where a number of civil society actors and experts met with a unified goal to outline the main problems in Lebanon’s energy sector and provide recommendations for priority actions to be taken by the new (and subsequent) government(s). We believe that the recommended actions below would promote a new spirit of accountability, transparency, and integrity in the sector and establish clear laws, governance, standards, and procedures.
Moreover, we believe that these actions take into account the current worldwide disruptions and evolutions in the energy industry. Lebanon shall restructure its power sector to benefit from the falling costs of renewables and energy storage, and to allow for the development of distributed power generation and the rapid integration of new technologies.