Solar panels have made a sudden and intensive appearance on the roofs of Lebanese buildings in recent years, particularly since the crisis that began in 2019, in Beirut and the big cities as much as in the most remote villages.

It's no secret that the sudden development of this alternative clean energy is not due to a sudden burst of awareness among the Lebanese – which environmentalists have long been hoping for – but is the outcome of the economic and financial crisis. In 2021-2022, this turned into an energy crisis, reducing access to electricity to its simplest form.

Admittedly, the expansion of solar energy has taken place in chaos and disorder, with no planning or safeguards. With the State absent and its legitimacy to intervene in the regulation of this sector largely undermined by its failure, this expansion has taken place to the detriment of social equity: increasingly, access to energy is the prerogative of the privileged who can afford it, whereas it should be a sacred right.

Even the quality of the equipment installed was not always up to scratch. The sudden prosperity of this sector attracted all kinds of non-specialists, and consumers found themselves without recourse when a technical or financial problem related to product quality arose. In other words, this boom, rather than being the good news we had hoped for, ended up becoming yet another symptom of the malaise eating away at Lebanon's energy sector.

All these issues, and in particular that of social equity, were discussed at length during two open debates organized last June by the Arab Reform Initiative. During these two events – I had the pleasure of moderating one of them – experts dissected the lack of governance that has always marked the management of Lebanon's energy sector, and which also manifested itself during the country's haphazard solar energy boom.

Whether we call it lack of governance, incompetence, or corruption – it's probably a toxic mix of all three – this situation has led to the disaster we are witnessing today, almost 35 years after the end of the 1975-1990 war, and despite the colossal reconstruction efforts that had been underway since the 1990s.

Why has the financial abyss resulting from the mismanagement of Lebanon's electricity sector – the debt linked to this sector represents over 40% of the national debt – never found its way to a solution?

A pattern that repeats itself

As a journalist who has worked in Lebanon for over 20 years, it seems to me that answering this question is as difficult as understanding why household waste remains so problematic when there are a multitude of solutions available to officials; why the pollution of the Litani River is so catastrophic even though its sources are so well known; or why a sector like sand and stone quarrying (the overwhelming majority of which operates without permits) is still unregulated, causing ecological disasters all over the country.

While incomprehension prevails in the face of this criminal procrastination that keeps basic services in such a poor state, its causes are much easier to understand when we see how the pattern is repeated in all these sectors, including electricity.

Everywhere, we see the same opacity surrounding data, the same propensity for last-minute patch-up solutions when the problem has already festered, and the same impunity in the face of failure. Not to mention the fact that officials are constantly on the defensive, quicker to defend the indefensible and to absolve themselves by accusing others of mistakes made by their administration than to give clear answers to questions from the Lebanese.

So much so that in Lebanon, as is often said, there is a lot of corruption but no corruption, a lot of incompetence but no incompetence... And five years after the aborted popular uprising of 2019, not only have none of the desired reforms been undertaken, but the entire system is in a state of advanced degradation.

This well-oiled system has served the political class for decades and aims to constantly muddy the waters to guarantee its impunity. It also aims to keep out those who can act more rationally, if not by proposing and implementing effective solutions, then at least by putting their finger on the problem.

These actors include the private sector, civil society activists, journalists, and, of course, public opinion.

A difficult reality to decipher

As journalists, we find it hard to decipher, for the public, this imbroglio that empties the pockets of citizens without providing them with a minimum of services. The energy sector, whose main provider remains Electricité du Liban (EDL), is the biggest money pit in a country that has several. This monumental failure can be explained by a hyper-centralized system, operating according to the interests of a few, to the detriment of the many.

To cite just one example, didn't EDL's failure to supply the Lebanese with electricity foster the emergence and resilience of a mafia of private generators, often connected to influential figures? A mafia which, in turn, would take a very dim view of any solution that would render it obsolete?

One wonders whether the media are still playing their part in clarifying and shedding light on the realities of this controversial sector. Without wishing to gloss over the political affiliations of a certain number of media outlets, which often limit freedom of speech and the accuracy of analysis depending on which side the ministers concerned are, the fact remains that the general public is now widely informed about the dysfunction of this sector and the real cost of energy. This is putting a strain on the country's budget as well as on that of individual households.

As for environmental activists in all fields, they have not always lived up to the hopes placed in them, due to the deep divisions within the environmental movement caused by the egos of some individuals, and the involvement of some of these environmentalists in the corrupt political system, even serving as a front for it. This has prevented the group from becoming the counterweight it was intended to be. Even the recent solar energy boom has nothing to do with their activism for cleaner energy, and their impact on the general public remains limited. They failed just as much in the 30 years after the war to impose solutions in areas such as waste treatment and pollution control because they moved forward in scattered mini-groups. As a result, they are weakened in the face of a well-oiled establishment that plays on their differences.

The private sector – except for companies that are close to the political establishment, and therefore complicit by profiting from state contracts – is generally excluded from real participation in service provision through laws and systems that grant monopolies to one institution or another, such as the monopoly granted to quarry owners in the field of sand and rock extraction, accompanied by a ban on the import of raw materials, or the monopoly granted to large companies under contract to the State for the treatment and burial of waste. In this context, we may be surprised to see the recent boom in solar energy, which has allowed thousands of individuals and institutions to free themselves from the State's control over access to energy, and thus break this monopoly even minimally. It should not be forgotten, however, that it took place at a time when the state was weakening considerably, and remained incomplete because it lacked a framework based on a clear vision.

A matter of life and death

Based on all the above, it becomes clear that the causes of the great failure in the energy sector, as in other fields linked to the environment, are structural and the result of a notorious lack of political will, a resistance to any kind of change that might upset a system that benefits a minority of profiteers. Nothing else can explain why no in-depth reforms have been initiated to turn around the electricity sector or other sectors.

Even the few laws passed by Parliament have never been implemented, serving instead to satisfy the demands of international donors exasperated by official Lebanese inaction, as was demonstrated during the June debates: the most striking example of this is Law 462 of 2002, designed to govern the sector, and which had sought to limit political interference in the energy sector, by creating an independent Electricity Regulatory Authority. However, this authority has still not been set up, probably due to political tug-of-war and a desire to maintain control over the sector by keeping it in a state of chaos.

In the context of such a system of clientelism and corruption, what solutions should we demand or even hope for? And how can the media contribute?

First and foremost, we must recognize the futility of promoting merely technical solutions in sectors that are certainly technical, but where the brakes are political. Only in-depth reforms can produce effective results, and it's good that journalists are aware of this. At a time when none of those responsible for the current failure have been penalized, and many are still in office, it will be of little use to propose solutions that would be implemented by them. Reforms seemingly far removed from the sector in question are essential to pave the way for the resolution of recurring problems such as electricity: we can cite the necessary judicial reform to ensure an independent judiciary, or the strengthening of control bodies, which will finally enable accountability in cases of embezzlement or mismanagement, which is not the case today. For journalists, activating the Access to Information Act is crucial, as it would force institutions to show greater transparency in publishing data that should be available to the general public.

At the end of the day, the real contribution of the media, especially the more independent and serious ones, will be to continue raising public awareness by revealing what officials want to keep hidden, and by highlighting subjects that really affect people's lives, such as the link between the multiplication of generators and air pollution, for example. The public, for its part, is being battered by this energy crisis, which is affecting its finances by forcing it to pay two bills – the increasingly expensive one from EDL, and the exorbitant one from the local generator owner. Or to go into debt to install solar panels, with no possibility of feeding the surplus electricity back into the grid and profiting from it (the law has been passed but not enforced).

And that's not the worst of it: the emissions generated by the energy sector, with its antiquated power plants and generators scattered all over the country, are one of the main causes of air pollution. Recently, an American University of Beirut study conducted by MP Najat Aoun Saliba's team showed that pollution generated specifically by generators has doubled since 2017. Not to mention that the effects of climate change are increasingly devastating and that reducing emissions is one of the requirements of any modern society.

So energy reform is no longer just a matter of big money or fighting cronyism, but a matter of life and death.