Incentivize to energize

Incentivize to energize

Through its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), approved by Parliament under Law 115 dated 2019, Lebanon has committed to achieving a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Moreover, the policy paper for the electricity sector issued by the Ministry of Energy and Water (MoEW) and approved by the Council of Ministers on April 8, 2019, aims to secure 30 percent of Lebanon’s total electricity consumption from renewable energy (RE) sources by 2030. Achieving these lofty goals seems very unlikely, unless the private sector is incentivized to participate in the generation of such energy.

The electricity sector already had to grapple with a difficult financial situation and the high costs of maintaining its production and distribution networks, so it was among the first services to suffer from the collapse of the economy alongside the banking sector. In turn, it directly affected a host of other sectors that rely on electricity, from industry to agriculture, hospitality, media, and banking again. Lebanon’s crippling energy crisis is made worse by its dependency on fuel imports which are threatened by the shortage of US dollar currency. Rolling blackouts that for many years used to last for three to six hours per day, as of