Introduction
1.1 Context: Lebanon’s Electricity Sector Reform and Green Energy Push
Lebanon's electricity sector is at a rare turning point, though not necessarily because technical or financial problems have changed. Unreliable service, massive losses, and fragmented governance have defined the sector for decades, as successive World Bank and donor diagnostics have made clear, and they are unlikely to disappear quickly. What has changed is the political context: a new president, a new government, and a brief sense that cross‑bargaining – a recurring feature of Lebanon's consociational political system – might be possible again. That creates a window of opportunity to reorder priorities and build coalitions, which previously have failed to materialize. Political parties matter here because they influence Cabinet formation, ministerial appointments, parliamentary oversight, and, in practice, many of the bargains that shape electricity reforms.
The starting premise of this mapping is straightforward: without knowing who actually holds influence, how coordination happens in practice, and where the rest of the reform agendas already align, policymaking will remain reactive and fragmented. A systematic, evidence‑based map of stakeholders can accelerate progress by pointing advocacy and donor efforts toward a handful of decisions that can unlock real and effective change.
That context now includes a significant green energy component. In 2023, Lebanon passed Law No. 318, which establishes a legal framework for distributed renewable energy, permits various forms of net metering, and authorizes P2P trading among private entities. At the same time, LGIF was launched to attract climate finance and develop standardized, bankable structures for clean energy and grid support investments. The two have shifted focus from sole reliance on large, centralized projects toward a diversified system where distributed assets, digital metering, and transparent settlement rules are more prominent. The policy takeaway is clear: governance reforms and investment mobilization must advance together with stakeholder alignment on regulatory clarity, consumer protection, and market access, if distributed generation is to grow responsibly.
Actor diversity and variety make alignment difficult, which is why a structured mapping is essential. On the public side, MoEW, the Parliamentary Energy Committee, and EDL each hold different leverage over policy development, legislation, and operations. Political parties, including established blocs as well as emerging or independent actors, influence agenda-setting and oversight. Development partners, such as the World Bank, UNDP, and EU, offer diagnostics, funding, and convening power; while the private sector (developers, EPC/O&M providers, banks, and DFIs) turn rules into projects and capital flow. Public-private arrangements, like EDZ and EDJ, and highly dependent public utilities (regional water establishments) add further operational stakes. Even oil and gas institutions shape expectations and fiscal narratives relevant to electricity policy. A comprehensive categorization of these groups using an Influence-Interest-Use framework lays out the foundation for targeted engagement and coalition building.
This context also highlights key choices for 2026:
First, operationalizing Law 462/2002 through a fully functioning ERA, appointed in September 2025, is not just a box-ticking exercise. It is what separates political discretion from rule-based regulation and is the only credible anchor for licensing, market conduct, and consumer protection under both legacy and renewable energy regimes.
Second, EDL must move beyond reactive crisis management and demonstrate concrete commercial and operational gains through loss reduction, digital metering, and credible performance contracts; otherwise, no tariff or subsidy reform will withstand political pressure.
Third, tariff adjustments should be paired with explicit social protections for low-income consumers and essential public services, like water and health facilities, that cannot endure further shocks.
Fourth, facilities such as LGIF will only attract serious capital if rules translate into bankable, transparent project pipelines rather than isolated deals. The mapping connects these aspects by showing where positions already align, where resistance is strongest, and which actors can broker workable agreements.
1.2 Why This Mapping Matters
Lebanon’s electricity crisis is more than just a technical failure. It’s a daily test of who can access basic services and on what terms. Households and small businesses have borne the cost of diesel generators for years, particularly the poor. As EDL’s deficit grew, public funds vanished, and blackouts became common. Essential services, like hospitals and water providers, now rely on temporary power solutions to keep running. Any serious reform plan must start from this distribution of costs and benefits, not from a neutral grid diagram, in other words, from a purely technical, depoliticized view of the electricity system.
A just energy transition focuses on democratic and accountable governance, including reform of environmental and energy policy. In Lebanon’s electricity sector, this translates into three simple tests: does it increase reliable and affordable access, does it clarify who is responsible for what, and does it create space for citizens and organized groups to influence decisions that impact them? Law 462 on the regulatory authority, Law 318 on distributed renewables, and new initiatives like LGIF all meet this standard.
The mapping is designed to answer these questions. It catalogs ministries, parties, EDL, and investors, and examines how their positions on ERA, EDL restructuring, tariff and subsidy reform, and distributed renewables will influence who benefits and who loses from upcoming decisions. It points out where agreement exists, such as on the need for an operational regulator, metering, loss reduction, and a functional framework under Law 318, and identifies areas where resistance is likely, including generator interests and other rentier economies.
The Support Matrix and network maps that follow can guide where to invest political and convening capital, which coalitions have the best chance of advancing specific reforms, and where justice‑oriented safeguards, such as consumer protection, public consultation, and essential service protections, can realistically be integrated into the sequencing.
In summary, this mapping is based on the belief that reform in Arab countries must come from local analysis, inclusive participation, and a commitment to justice. It aims not to impose outside solutions, but to make the terrain clear, so all Lebanese stakeholders can navigate it strategically and together.
Historical and Political Background
2.1 Historical and Political Evolution Shaping Current Positions
This section examines today’s reform prospects in the context of three decades of electricity politics. It traces four phases from post‑war reconstruction to the current decentralization and green‑finance shift, showing how each phase embedded certain interests and habits that continue to influence positions on regulation, EDL restructuring, and distributed renewable energy. It also highlights moments when outages, fiscal crises, and donor conditionality compelled parties and institutions to adapt their stances, even when major laws like 462 remained on paper.
Rebuilding and Investment: Where the Sector Started
After the civil war, Lebanon’s electricity sector was rebuilt around EDL, a state-owned, vertically integrated utility that retained a legal monopoly over generation, transmission, and distribution. Despite war damage, high losses, and weak commercial performance, EDL still supplied most of the country’s electricity and was treated by both the government and international financiers as an essential vehicle for recovery. Early reconstruction, therefore, focused on restoring firm generation capacity and rebuilding its transmission backbone, most notably through major new thermal plants at Deir Ammar and Zahrani, alongside smaller emergency additions. The main takeaway is that post-war recovery began not with market liberalization, but with heavy public investment in restoring EDL’s ability to keep the system running.
Just as important was the transmission rebuild: an integrated 220kV ring of about 339km with new substations and underground cables to move power from Deir Ammar and Zahrani into Beirut and the regions. The design standardized on 220kV – retiring the non‑standard 150kV – to reduce losses and support future regional interconnections. Key early elements included 220kV GIS substations in Saida and Baalbeck and 220kV underground cables between the IPC/Beddawi (Tripoli area) and Bahsas substations.
How and Was It Financed
The World Bank’s “Power Sector Restructuring and Transmission Expansion Project” (approved 1996) was the flagship banking operation for power during this period. It financed the high-voltage transmission/cabling pieces and technical assistance, while co-financiers and commercial credits financed other lots. It also put in place a special account for EDL and delegated procurement management to CDR, given its experience. Because different lenders had different procurement rules, the package was unbundled into “parallel financing” lots to speed up awards. World Bank records show that the first CCGT modules were targeted for mid-1997, prompting “advance procurement” so the grid could evacuate their output when ready.
The World Bank’s project paperwork shows the period’s project management realities as well: rights-of-way and some substation contracts lagged (especially those managed by EDL itself), the World Bank’s declared mis-procurement on the NCC contract in 2000, and the loan closed in January 2002 with part of the transmission ring still incomplete, constraining Zahrani’s dispatch until downstream works were finished. Even so, the northern substation that had been bombed in 1999/2000 was rehabilitated by April 2002 using project funds.
While the World Bank concentrated on the grid and TA, two CCGTs and other generation packages relied on export-credit, commercial credits, and other lenders. The government’s plan was to outsource O&M – initially through short-term agreements and later via longer-term, risk-based “affermage” contracts – for new CCGTs and the Zouk and Jiyyeh thermal plants – marking an early (though limited) step toward private-sector performance obligations within a largely state-owned system. The EDL Action Plan (1996) also proposed converting EDL’s old debt into equity and restoring the Kadisha concession, indicating an effort to clean up the balance sheet and standardize legacy arrangements.
On paper, the period planted seeds for today’s governance debates. Most notably, Law 462/2002 was enacted to create an independent ERA. But appointments and activation lagged, so regulatory duties continued de facto inside the ministry/EDL orbit, a structural gap that later complicated both private participation and, eventually, distributed energy rules.
By 2005: What Lebanon Had – and What Was Still Lacking
By the mid-2000s, Lebanon had two modern CCGTs in service, peaking turbines at Baalbek and Tyre, and major segments of a 220kV ring with new substations and underground cables (some completed, others delayed). These investments raised available capacity and began to lower technical constraints, but delayed grid segments and medium voltage reinforcements meant that the full benefit could not yet reach consumers, curbing Zahrani’s optimal output and keeping losses high. EDL remained institutionally weak, with technical/non-technical losses and arrears still elevated, and sector restructuring (unbundling/affermage) largely unimplemented. The period, therefore, rebuilt the system’s physical spine but left governance and commercial fixes incomplete, a legacy that shapes every subsequent reform cycle.
Why This Matters for Today’s Mapping
The period from 1990 to 2005 established two enduring realities that still shape stakeholder engagement in Lebanon’s electricity sector. First, EDL’s centrality, both technically and politically, was reinforced by reconstruction choices that expanded generation and transmission within a state-run architecture. This was evident in the Deir Ammar (Beddawi) combined cycle gas turbine project – roughly a 450MW plant designed to shift from diesel to gas – and in the development of the 220kV ring and substation backbone, including about 339km of ring lines and major substations that anchored the grid around national public infrastructure.
Second, the delayed activation of Law 462/2002 became a structural vulnerability that continues to reappear whenever Lebanon attempts to attract private capital or establish transparent market rules. As reconstruction matured, stakeholders inside and outside government began exploring independent power producer models and other forms of private participation, but this exposed unresolved preconditions, including an unclear regulatory authority, limited clarity on tariff policy and cost recovery, and fragmented decision-making across ministries, Parliament, and EDL. Political parties and parliamentary committees became more visible in shaping positions on public ownership, concession boundaries, and oversight, while localized service arrangements, such as EDZ and EDJ, later emerged as useful reference points on commercial discipline and service quality, even though they were not designed as national models for independent power producers. The stakeholder mapping for this project, therefore, examines which actors supported or resisted private participation during that period, as those positions often anticipate their current views on public-private partnerships and distributed energy markets.
As service reliability deteriorated and financial pressures deepened, especially after outages intensified in 2019, the policy debate expanded beyond thermal generation. Policymakers, political parties, civil society organizations, development partners, and private firms increasingly emphasized renewable energy, energy efficiency, loss reduction, transparency, and consumer protection. Development partners deepened both diagnostic and programmatic engagement, reinforcing the link between governance reform and access to funding, while private actors – including developers, engineers, procurers, and construction firms, operation and maintenance providers, and financiers – tested renewable pilots and stressed the importance of enabling rules for interconnection, metering, and settlement. Stakeholder interviews for this project will examine how the 2019 crisis reshaped party positions on independent regulation, tariff design, and technology choices, and whether those rhetorical shifts translated into legislative or programmatic action.
The present period is defined by a more explicit push toward clean energy and decentralization. Law 318/2023 created a legal framework for distributed renewable energy, including multiple forms of net metering and P2P transactions among private entities, while LGIF was launched to mobilize climate finance and standardize bankable structures for clean energy and grid support investments. Together, these developments shift part of the sector’s future away from large, centralized projects toward distributed assets that require digital metering, settlement rules, consumer safeguards, and transparent market conduct. They also sharpen the need to activate the independent regulation envisioned in Law 462/2002 so that renewable energy expansion takes place within a credible rules-based environment. At the same time, the recent presidential election and government formation have opened a new political window, raising expectations that cross-party bargaining could break longstanding bottlenecks, if sequenced effectively.
This mapping will test whether this moment reflects genuine coalition shifts or mainly rhetorical convergence. Across these phases, a recurring set of shocks has repeatedly forced actors to reconsider their positions: power outages and declining service quality have raised the political cost of blocking reform; fiscal and fuel-supply crises have made ad hoc fixes harder to sustain, increasing pressure on loss reduction, tariff rationalization, and improved bill collection; donor programs have linked financing to concrete governance measures, such as activating the regulator, adopting tariff frameworks, and reducing losses; and new technologies and financing instruments, from rooftop solar to blended-finance facilities, have given reformers more practical alternatives to the old centralized model. Any coalition building today – whether focused on empowering ERA, reducing distribution losses, or integrating green energy – must therefore start from this deeply path-dependent baseline.
The main consequence of this mapping is that Law 462/2002 sits at the center of almost every serious reform path. Without a credible regulator, neither legacy reforms tariffs, EDL performance contracts, unbundling, nor newer tools, such as Law 318 on distributed renewables and LGIF’s climate‑finance pipelines, can offer sufficient consumer protection or investor confidence. Green‑energy instruments also cannot scale if EDL’s operational problems – especially high losses and weak metering and collections – remain unresolved, since any distributed or on‑grid project ultimately depends on a stable and fairly managed network. Cross‑party bargaining around these laws and instruments is what will decide whether reforms move beyond declarations, which is why the Parliamentary Committee for Energy and Public Works and party advisors are treated here as central actors rather than background players.
In sum, Lebanon’s electricity politics have moved from post‑war reconstruction and a state‑centered EDL model, through tentative market opening and crisis‑driven improvisation, toward an emerging decentralization and green‑finance agenda. The present moment combines a political opening with a more sophisticated policy toolset – Laws 462 and 318, LGIF, and other facilities – that could shift incentives if long‑standing governance and operational bottlenecks are finally addressed. The historical lens in this section is therefore not descriptive only. It is the backdrop against which the stakeholder mapping, party positions, and Support Matrix should be interpreted.
Finally, this historical and political overview sets the stage for a mapping exercise that is at the heart of this paper, clearly presenting the main issues hampering sector reform and its development.
Methodology and Objectives
3.1 Objectives and Key Questions
This report presents a decision‑useful map of Lebanon’s electricity stakeholders: who influences what, who collaborates with whom, and who supports which reforms so that reformers can target engagement, de‑risk sequencing, and accelerate outcomes across both legacy and green‑energy agendas.
Specific Objectives
- Stakeholder ecosystem mapping across public authorities – Parliament, EDL and other utilities, political parties, civil society, development partners, private sector actors, PPPs, and relevant oil and gas institutions – that captures mandates, formal and informal levers, incentives and constraints, and basic influence and interest scores.
- Reform initiative analysis that records stakeholder positions on key reform baskets, including the regulatory authority under Law 462/2002, EDL structure and governance, tariffs and subsidies, and the distributed renewables regime created by Law 318/2023 and related rules on net‑metering, wheeling, and P2P trading, as well as emerging finance pathways, such as LGIF.
- Political party positioning through targeted interviews and a document review, producing a Support Matrix that compares the main parties and blocs, identifies potential coalitions and swing actors, and makes explicit where red lines are likely to lie.
- Actionable outputs in the form of a living Support Matrix and a basic collaboration network map that can inform advocacy strategies, donor coordination, and reform sequencing over the next three to five years.
Key Questions
Where do stakeholders converge or diverge on activating ERA under Law 462/2002? Should that law be amended before the regulator exercises its full remit? And if so, how?
What realistic pathways are there to improve EDL’s commercial and operational performance, especially loss reduction, metering, and collections? What governance tradeoffs will each pathway require?
Which enabling rules and market‑interface decisions are needed to translate Law 318/2023 into investable, socially acceptable pipelines, including interconnection standards, metering and settlement, net‑metering caps, and P2P oversight? How can instruments such as LGIF help mobilize finance without undermining affordability and basic protection for vulnerable users?
Structure and Intended Use
This report is written as a practical tool for different users – advocacy partners, donors, and policymakers – to quickly locate the pieces that matter for their work and reuse the Support Matrix and maps in future rounds of engagement.
Section 3 sets out the methodology: how the desk review, stakeholder census, and interviews were conducted; how evidence was logged; and how confidence levels were assigned.
Section 4 maps the stakeholder field across institutions, parties, and market actors, and introduces the Influence-Interest-Use grid that underpins the Support Matrix.
Section 5 analyses the main reform baskets regulation, EDL structure, tariffs and subsidies, distributed renewables, and finance, and records where key actors stand on each.
Section 6 distills political party positions, based on interviews and public records, and locates potential coalitions and red lines.
Section 7 flags political sensitivities and data‑quality issues so that readers are clear where findings are solid and where caution is needed.
Sections 8 and 9 draw out implications for reform sequencing and present concrete recommendations for short‑ and medium‑term action, and Section 10 concludes.
The appendices contain the stakeholder census, interview tools, a detailed Support Matrix, and a glossary of laws and decrees for reference.
The intended use is straightforward. Readers who want the technical and legal baseline can focus on Sections 2 and 3. Those preparing advocacy, dialogue, or program design can work from Sections 4 to 9 and the Support Matrix (Appendix A), which can be updated as positions shift or new actors come into play.
3.2 Desk Review Protocols
The mapping started from a structured desk review of Lebanon’s electricity laws, policies, and diagnostic work. Primary legal texts include Law 462/2002 on ERA and Law 318/2023 on distributed renewable energy, together with implementing decrees and official policy papers from MoEW. These were read alongside major analytical reports by international organizations and research centers that document the sector’s performance, governance gaps, and reform proposals.
Each source was logged in an evidence register with fields for type of document, date, main claims, and a simple confidence rating. Claims were coded against the main reform baskets: regulation, EDL structure, tariffs and subsidies, distributed renewables, and finance, and against stakeholder categories. Where sources disagree, the discrepancy was recorded explicitly and flagged for follow‑up during interviews or targeted document checks.
3.2 Stakeholder Census Approach
On the back of this review, the project constructed a census of organizations and institutional actors that matter for electricity reform. The census covers government (Cabinet, MoEW, EDL, and other utilities), Parliament and party structures, municipal and regional utilities, civil society, development partners, private investors and service providers, PPPs such as EDZ and EDJ, and oil and gas institutions where they intersect with electricity policy. For each entry, a short “stakeholder card” records mandate, formal and informal levers, incentives and constraints, and an initial assessment of influence, interest, and dependency on electricity outcomes.
The census was built iteratively. An initial list was derived from laws, policy papers, and prior mappings, then expanded through snowballing whenever documents or interviewees named additional relevant actors. The endpoint was not an exhaustive coverage but a reasonably complete picture of institutions that have a real say over regulation, investment, operations, and oversight, or that face high stakes in outcomes.
3.3 Interview Strategy and Qualitative Data
Semi-structured interviews were used to fill any gaps, test hypotheses derived from the historical section, and capture party and institutional positions that are not fully written down. This sample prioritizes high‑leverage actors in government and EDL, party portfolio‑holders and MPs on the energy committee, private finance and project developers, and civil society actors involved in energy access, transparency, and environmental advocacy. Interviews followed a common guide that covers reform priorities and red lines, views on the regulator and Law 462, EDL structure and performance, tariff and subsidy reform, the implementation of Law 318, and perceived coalitions and veto players.
Qualitative data were coded thematically against reform baskets and stakeholder categories, with each claim tagged for source and confidence based on corroboration and the informant’s vantage point. Where positions diverged across interviews and documents, the discrepancy was retained rather than averaged out and is reflected as such in the Support Matrix and narrative analysis.
3.4 Data Triangulation and Validation
Triangulation worked along three main tracks. First, interview material was checked against public-record party statements, parliamentary minutes, and official documents to see whether private positions line up with what actors say in public. Second, interview claims were compared with donor and utility documentation, especially where financial flows, loss levels, or project pipelines are concerned. Third, stated positions on distributed renewables and market opening were tested against available data on actual uptake of solar and other DRE solutions, as well as grid and fuel‑use patterns.
Two reforms serve as test cases for validation: activation of ERA under Law 462 and implementation of Law 318 on distributed renewables. Both require alignment between legislation, decrees, and practice, and both mobilize a wide range of stakeholders. Where evidence remains inconsistent after this process, uncertainty is kept visible in the Support Matrix and in the narrative.
3.5 Literature Base Supporting the Methodology
The methodology draws on established work on stakeholder analysis and complex reform governance. Classic stakeholder‑salience and power-interest frameworks are used to think about which actors can credibly block or enable change and how to prioritize engagement. Social‑network analysis concepts inform the way collaboration patterns and influence clusters are described, even where this research does not run a full quantitative network model.
In parallel, guidance from applied policy analysis and qualitative research is used to structure interviews, handle discrepancies, and assess confidence in contested claims. The aim is not to reproduce academic models in full, but to adapt practical elements that help make the mapping transparent, replicable, and useful for future rounds of reform work.
Our approach draws on established frameworks:
- Stakeholder salience assessing power, legitimacy, and urgency to determine which claims dominate at any point.
- Power-interest (influence–interest) grids and public sector stakeholder techniques for prioritization and engagement design.
- Stakeholder typologies analysis methods and SNA to map coordination and influence clusters across reforms.
- Applied policy analysis guidance for structuring interviews and triangulation in complex governance settings.
These frameworks will inform the collaboration patterns of Influence-Interest-Use rubric, the Support Matrix structure, and network mapping used in Sections 4 and 5.
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.
