The Lebanese electric power sector is run by the Electricité du Liban (EDL), an autonomous state-owned power utility, whose mission is to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to all Lebanese territories.
The power utility is a public establishment with an industrial and commercial vocation and is operating under the administrative tutelage of the Ministry of Energy and Water, which is responsible for policy formulation of the water, power, and fuel sectors.
History Rewind
Lebanon is a top candidate for renewable energy as it possesses an abundance of natural resources and is blessed with climate benefits. Most of the hydro plants were constructed during Lebanon’s “Golden Age,” during which the country produced an impressive 75% of its electricity from water.
Hydropower is Lebanon’s oldest form of alternative energy and provided most of its electricity in the pre-civil war years.
The Litani River
The Litani River hydroelectric project was intended to be the answer to all of Lebanon’s problems.
The Litani River's potential for national development had long been recognized, but renewed interest in the idea of a large-scale combined hydropower and irrigation project arose in the early years of the independent Lebanese Republic. Le Litani: Etude Hydrologique, a study, and justification of a possible hydroelectric and irrigation scheme on the Litani, was published in 1948 by Ibrahim 'Abd al-Al, an engineer and professor at the Ecole Superieure d'Ingenieurs in Beirut, and later the Director-General of the Ministry of Public Works.
As a result, by the early 1950s, only a small proportion of what was conceivable in terms of hydroelectric generation was being used, and a significant program for the Litani River promised to considerably increase the quantity of hydroelectric power generated in the country.
Lebanon, unlike its neighbors, possessed rich water resources, the potential of which had only just been recognized and exploited.
Following WWII, hydroelectric power generation began to grow rapidly in Lebanon, thanks to a variety of private operations financed by international businesses and located mostly on the al-Bared and Ibrahim Rivers.
Some academics and historians saw the Litani River hydropower project as the solution to all of Lebanon's issues. Its purpose was to offer cheap, abundant electrical energy while significantly increasing the extent of irrigated agricultural land in the Bekaa Valley and along the Mediterranean coast between Beirut and Sidon.
Cheap energy would enable the industry to thrive, shifting the economy away from its perilous reliance on invisible income and the service sector and allowing the country's productive sectors to take the lead.
Similarly, major irrigation expansion would allow for the growth of more intensive, efficient agriculture, increasing rural incomes as well as cash crop exports, so improving Lebanon's ever-worsening trade balance.
The tourist industry would gain as well, because the Qaraoun Lake, created by the main hydroelectric dam, would provide a lovely getaway for visitors, and hotels and guesthouses would rise up along its borders.
In summary, the Litani Project was supposed to be a panacea, a cure-all for Lebanon's many iniquities, and the start of a new era.
But let’s step back and ask a more fundamental question: Where exactly do we stand on alternative energy now?
The reasons for the current outages vary.
Epic corruption has compounded physical challenges. Politicians have delayed or prevented solutions if their cronies don’t get contracts to fuel, maintain, or build power plants.
The reality, maybe unexpectedly, was a little different and fell far short of these ambitious goals. The intentions to use the Litani waters for irrigation never really got off the ground, and irrigation demands were constantly pushed aside in favor of using the water to generate power. Simultaneously, power output fell short of what was achievable due to competition from existing commercial energy providers and the Litani project's exorbitant expenses, which made its energy product too expensive to sell unsubsidized.
As a result, Lebanon's long agricultural crisis continued unabated, and while the completion of the Litani project coincided with a surge in light industrial exports, the two developments were completely unrelated, and the era of cheap, abundant electrical power that would have sparked an industrial revolution never arrived.
Protests and popular discontent on a range of topics, notably the high cost of living, characterized the early years of the Lebanese Republic. Electricité de Beyrouth (EDB), a private French concessionary company backed by French, Belgian, and Swiss capital, was the largest utility company in the country and was responsible for generating around 57% of Lebanon's electricity on the eve of independence, but was increasingly resented for the high profits it was reaping, despite the poor service it provided.
EDB, like other concessionary businesses, was a vital node in the French network that sought economic hegemony in the Middle East in general and Lebanon in particular.
EDB, along with other powerful French interests in the country, was engaged in a campaign in the early years of Lebanese independence to shape the direction of Lebanese economic and development policy in such a way that the privileged position of French companies in key sectors like energy supply was maintained.
This campaign was led, until his downfall in 1951, by Rene Busson, the powerful director of the Banque de Syrie et du Liban (BSL).
In line with the less-than-ideal administrative and economic circumstances indicated above, real construction on the Litani project began slowly in 1957 and was impeded by a succession of progressively serious issues.
Fast Forward
The Litani project quickly ran into a series of serious challenges and setbacks, mostly as a result of poor monitoring and inept management, which should be viewed as repercussions of the wider political and economic context in which the project was conducted.
The Lebanese ruling class's outright rejection of the enthusiastic embrace of ongoing economic liberalism meant that the Litani project, namely an ambitious development project requiring careful planning and extensive state intervention to ensure success, was unlikely to be a success.
The disregard of fundamental state institutions, the denigration of public finance and administration, particularly in the economic arena, and the promotion of private-sector interests created a climate conducive to corruption, mismanagement, and shortsighted decision-making.