22 May 2010

BEIRUT: The electricity sector could be facing a severe crisis if the country doesn’t prepare itself, according to Hassan Harajili, the manager of UNDP’s CEDRO project.

In an interview with The Daily Star, he explained how the project is aiming to prevent a breakdown of Lebanon’s electricity supply in the future.

CEDRO, which stands for Country Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Demonstration Project for the Recovery of Lebanon, came into being through a $9.73 million grant by the Spanish government to the Lebanese Recovery Fund, an endowment that was set up in the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli aggression.

Spain had insisted that the money be invested in the development of renewable energy application, and the project was set up in coordination with the Energy and Water Ministry and the Council for Development and Reconstruction. Its main goal is to demonstrate how renewable energy can play a part in the solution to Lebanon’s growing energy problems.

“The general environment of the electricity sector is in a dire state,” Harajili explained. “If the demand continues to grow as expected, the supply will not be able to keep up.”

According to a report on the country’s electricity system he co-authored, Electricite du Liban is nominally capable of providing around 2,100 megawatts (MW) per year, but due to plant failures, fuel supply shortages and wartime hostilities, the actual amount of electricity supplied varies between as little as 1,600 and 2,000MW. Even with the electricity it imports from Syria and Egypt, the state is unable to fully meet the demand, which reached around 2,600MW in 2006. Meanwhile, this figure is expected to grow at four to six percent annually.

“To be able to meet this demand, Lebanon needs to build eight new power plants by 2030,” Harajili said. “But first and foremost, they need to reduce demand and increase energy efficiency.” While he lauded the current Electricity Minister Alan Tabourian’s approach to the problem as sensible, he cautioned that the minister had inherited a task made considerably harder by decades of mismanagement.

“What every country tries to do is to assure security of supply,” he explained.

“In order to do that, diversifying the sources of energy is very important. In Lebanon, there is very little diversity.”

In tackling this problem, renewable energy can go a long way to not only ensure greater reliability, but also to make electricity more environmentally sustainable.

To advance its cause, CEDRO acts on different levels: on the ground, the project equips schools, prisons and even army barracks across the country with solar water heating systems, as well as full-blown photovoltaic units that convert the sun’s rays into electricity.

At the same time, CEDRO is lobbying the government to put in place a law that would allow owners of photovoltaic units to feed excess electricity back into the grid.

Technically possible, the amount of electricity they feed into the grid could then be subtracted from their bill, which would help make the system economically viable for private users as well as taking some pressure off supply.

The project has also financed two solar street lighting projects, in the city of Batroun and a nearby village, Assia, which make driving at night less dangerous. While he admits that the solar-powered lamps are still expensive, Harajili hopes to find a cheaper solution with a combination of solar power and LEDs.

Obviously, CEDRO cannot equip the whole country with solar power, nor does it want to.

“We would consider it a success if we could kick-start the process,” Harajili clarified.

At the moment, equipping one’s house with solar power is still more of a “statement” than an actual money-saving measure, he admitted.

The fact that electricity prices are still heavily subsidized, based on an outdated oil price of $25 a barrel, means that while consumers still pay relatively little for their energy, the subsidies are eating increasingly large holes into the state’s budget (6 percent of GDP in 2008 was spent on these subsidies). Once the government is forced to adjust prices according to the real cost, solar power could become a lot more interesting for private users.

To make the technology more accessible, the project is trying to incite local providers of solar technology to make their prices competitive by creating more demand.

They are also lobbying the government to create additional stimuli for consumers, such as a reduction on the VAT for solar technology.

“At the moment, there’s a lot of opportunity for the renewable energy sector,” Harajili believes. “Our prime minister has traveled to the summit in Copenhagen, the ministers are for renewable energy, and the market is booming.”

In Copenhagen, Saad Hariri declared that by 2020, renewable energy would account for 12 percent of the Lebanese energy mix, compared to a current total of four percent provided by hydro-power.

To facilitate the implementation of this plan, CEDRO is also compiling an atlas that will indicate those areas that are best suited for wind farms, as well as trying to advance a national bio-energy strategy that would make use of sustainable sources of bio-energy.

For the moment, Harajili is still waiting for the government to reform the laws in order to encourage the spread of solar power to private users.

Faced with the prospect of a collapsing electricity grid that grows more acute every year, the authorities should be inclined to use whatever means they have available to avert the blackout, he said.

Copyright The Daily Star 2010.