24-hour electricity has not been accessible to Lebanese citizens since the end of the civil war in 1990 (Saghir et al., 2022). Lebanon’s energy crisis, rooted in political mismanagement and corruption has only worsened since the 2019 economic downturn, which as described by the World Bank, is one of the worst economic crises since the 1850s (World Bank, 2021). Lebanese citizens have taken the energy crisis into their own hands and supplement Electricité du Liban (EDL) or government-provided energy through diesel power generators and renewable energy. The citizens themselves have initiated a green energy transition, not for the desire to live more sustainably, but out of pure necessity. As a result, domestic solar energy production in Lebanon has increased tenfold over the last decade (Haytayan, 2023).
I think it is clear here that communities across Lebanon are more than capable of taking action regardless of the several political, social, and environmental crises happening around them. This understanding inspired my last piece of work on the energy crisis in Lebanon where I outlined a decentralised micro-grid community-owned solar panel system as my suggested solution (Machaca, 2024). Essentially, the paper looked at designing a solution an urban community could use to address a problem they were facing. This piece of work made a point of empowering the community without political involvement. However, political actors will always play an important role, whether that is a positive, or in this case a negative role. After finishing that paper, I was left eager to understand the past and present energy politics in Lebanon in order to analyse how political action will affect community-led initiatives like the one I had developed. Thus, this paper looks to summarise the past, present, and future of energy policy in Lebanon, to develop a more informed understanding of how this affects community-owned renewable energy systems.
