Electricity Crisis Management in Lebanon
“With the proliferation of problems for which the state cannot find solutions, and those are many, we have become specialists in solving them. Yet what is good and bad at the same time is that those individual solutions resolve the problem for one household, but what about the rest?” This is how one resident in Beirut described the situation when asked about their building management, recounting the burdens of managing multiple crises and overcoming the acute deficiencies of Lebanese public services. The new Decentralized Renewable Energy law (the DRE) has the potential to build on and support existing collective initiatives – starting with the building committee, which is the smallest unit of urban collectives – but only if it extends technical expertise to such collectives and supports the development of participatory governance tools.
The economic downturn since 2019 has exacerbated the electricity crisis, and its impact on people’s everyday lives has surpassed the worst projections. This was compounded by a currency collapse and imported fuel shortages, including of the diesel necessary to operate state-provided and privately generated electricity. The power outages that culminated in 2021 blackout are not a distinct event; after all, Lebanon has always lived through a protracted electricity crisis. Since the war, people in Lebanon have learned to live with power shortages, finding myriad ways to cope. Scheduled outages and load shedding became a feature of everyday life, resulting in solutions and augmentation strategies that became entrenched in the fabric of the country’s built environment. Large diesel generators were installed in new and existing buildings and neighborhoods, providing continuous electricity provision to those who could afford it and dividing cities along socioeconomic lines. For decades, the country’s residents have been seeking solutions to obtain electricity, looking for affordability, a level of efficiency, and fairness in access. The Ebla Research Collective published in 2023 – along with previous studies conducted on the impact of electricity on living conditions, community management, and governance – revealed the hardships in those endeavors.
The electricity crisis has been dictating the daily rhythms of household life. This started as temporary but has become a challenging lifestyle, where rationing the use of everything that requires electricity, including access to water, has had severe impacts on people’s everyday lives and livelihoods. Residents’ experiences varied based on their gender, income, age, and location, but a widespread sense of exhaustion and stress was evident. The most vulnerable are those with health or special care needs, like the elderly, those with chronic illnesses, or the disabled. In that sense, the crisis has accentuated socioeconomic inequalities, especially those resulting from the recent financial and economic crisis. Within the same building, the impacts of the crisis segregated neighbors into those who could afford electricity bills and those who could not, which resulted in differentiated access to electricity and its services. The devaluation of the Lebanese lira has also resulted in disparities and led to heightened tensions, particularly when negotiating generator hours or the operation of the building’s elevator.
Residents, especially those serving on committees responsible for managing building services, face significant physical and emotional stress particularly when negotiating generator usage or elevator operation; managing daily complaints; listening to neighbors’ financial and personal struggles; and taking on the responsibility of managing electricity and water in the absence of effective state support. All this adds to their ongoing stress and burden.
Against this backdrop, we observe that ecosystems to address electricity shortages emerged across urban and rural areas. In rural areas, some municipalities were able to build mini-grids that offered “opportunities to reduce costs and dependence on fuel oil, to strengthen community capacities, and to reduce the pressure of electricity demand on the national grid”. However, the urban setting has been more complex especially where the municipal authorities are not active.
We found that Beirut residents have, in most cases, relied on their “building committees”, striving to organize collectively to negotiate residents’ demands and effectively manage the production and access to electricity at the building level. In every building, committees apply a set of principles to manage competing needs – such as the type of occupancy contract (rent or ownership), floor level, household size, income level, and the possibilities for neighborly solidarity – all to achieve a level of fairness that could help them to navigate the repercussions of a financial crisis.
The systems managed by building committees in Beirut, an under-researched subject, reveal a tendency toward collaboration, with individual solutions only pursued when collective efforts fail. However, collaboration often depends on factors like the nature of the problem; the economic composition and disparities among building residents; the management approach of the building committee; and the broader urban ecosystem that includes neighboring buildings and service providers such as generator operators, water suppliers, and internet providers. Such ecosystems, emerging out of necessity, have shown varying degrees of success. Regardless of existing legislation, people want electricity and are finding ways to secure it from any accessible source.
Can the DRE Address Residents’ Demands and Needs? What Are the Solutions?
Against this backdrop, as the first renewable energy law in Lebanon, the DRE offers an opportunity to build on such ecosystems, which could never replace a national policy to develop and feed the national grid, ensure universal and affordable access to citizens, and reduce deadly pollution. The law will facilitate the generation and distribution of electricity production from renewable sources outside Électricité du Liban (Electricity of Lebanon), pending both the national grid’s electrification and the mechanisms for its application. Without the latter conditions, the DRE remains a broad regulation.
The DRE also allows direct access without using Électricité du Liban’s infrastructure when end-users are on an adjacent estate, which is most relevant to buildings in urban settings (organizing and directing the building ecosystems to renewables). However, our research on building committees’ management of electricity in Beirut and its suburbs revealed that the governance of these systems is the real challenge. While the law opens the possibility of production and distribution from a technical and legal perspective, the intricacies of organizing, governing, and risk management through collective bodies at the community level are not directly addressed. Much of the discussion around the DRE carries an implicit assumption that initiatives for decentralized energy will come from the private sector. The actual practice of energy production and management in urban areas of Beirut for the past 30 years shows that energy is provided by smaller community entrepreneurial initiatives, as with how generator providers started, or by communal groups like building committees. Our research confirms that, short of energy provision by the state, the communities prefer communal energy production or integrated options that combine these communal efforts with local generator energy provision, which we believe the new DRE has the potential to support.
In the absence of a national, structural, and integrated solution, as well as a renewable energy master plan that addresses Lebanon’s electricity problems (which remains a priority), there is potential to explore alternative solutions through collective initiatives. These initiatives can start at the smallest unit of urban collectives – the building committee – and expand through collaboration between different buildings in a street or neighborhood. By forming cooperatives of buildings, these groups can work together to create broader local structures at the neighborhood level that lobby for improvements and collectively respond to crises.
Nevertheless, such initiatives require support, not only through technical expertise but also by developing participatory governance tools. Additionally, they could benefit from funding that promotes inclusion and adherence to public safety standards. Municipal authorities have an enabling role in empowering these collectives, setting standards, and mitigating risks. Beyond the DRE, it may also be beneficial to revisit and reform other legislation, such as the building committees’ law – which currently focuses on property owners rather than residents – to facilitate the collaborative management of buildings and better respond to emerging needs and conditions.
Lebanon requires comprehensive and sustainable planning and implementation for its electricity sector, tailored to its unique challenges and specific needs. Amidst the prevailing conditions, and despite efforts to introduce policy tools such as the DRE, it is essential to apply a local lens, on top of the macro perspective, and gain an understanding of the local dynamics, opportunities, and possibilities to inform solutions and remain grounded in the country’s lived reality.
In conclusion, addressing Lebanon’s electricity crisis requires a comprehensive approach that balances national policy frameworks with localized, community-driven solutions. While initiatives like the DRE are a step forward, they must be complemented by participatory governance mechanisms, inclusive funding strategies, and regulatory reforms that empower both residents and municipal authorities. Strengthening legal frameworks – such as revisiting the building committees’ law – can facilitate more collaborative and adaptive management of shared resources. Ultimately, sustainable energy solutions must be rooted in Lebanon’s lived realities, ensuring that policies are not only technically sound but also socially equitable and practically implementable.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
