Current Situation Of Electricity Crisis In Lebanon
With great power comes an even greater electricity bill. Our poverty rate has increased to reach 27% which means that 1 in 4 people in Lebanon live under the poverty line and the Lebanese people are paying twice the electrical bill while experiencing the lowest quality services ( 13 hours of blackout/day and Losses on the grid are reported amounting to 40%, of which 15% corresponds to technical losses while the remaining are non-technical losses [MEW-Ministry of Energy and Water - 2010] ).
Moreover, there is a serious deficit in generating energy to meet our demands and we’re jumping from the frying pan into the fire (figure 1). Not to mention the serious danger of generators in the atmosphere. Global warming is threatening us more than ever due to the fact that the planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1. 62 degrees Fahrenheit = 0. 9 degrees Celsius (IPCC Fifth Assessment Report) and the carbon dioxide level has reached its highest level: 400 ppm - parts per million (National Research Council (NRC), 2006). Our cancer rate (8,000 cases reported/year) and pollution rates (air pollution reached 79. 9% and the pollution index is equal to 89. 44) are among the highest in the world. But this wasn’t always the case in Lebanon. During the mid-1960s, Lebanon reached the peak of its economic success and was seen as a fortress of economic strength by the oil-rich Arab states, whose funds and investments made Lebanon one of the world's fastest-growing economies.
The energy sector was blooming and was meeting our needs until the deep impact of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). (See figure 2) Between 1975-1990, a civil war broke out and threw Lebanon back to the stone age. Consequently, the economy took the heaviest blow at the beginning of 1984, and this economic plunge was escorted by a disastrous inflation of over 500 percent and a phenomenal devastation of the electrical power plants and industrial areas (LCPS, 1992: 30). As a result, the electricity was allocated the highest budget in the reconstruction plan (figure 3), but still, up until today, the electricity shortage problem hasn’t been solved due to political differences and the growing need for energy due to the enormous growth of the population that reached 50% (more than 600000 Syrian refugees migrated to Lebanon to escape from the war in their own country).
The electricity crisis persists and it is burdening the Lebanese citizen and the government ( the annual cost incurred by the Lebanese government is reaching USD 2 billion while the electricity is supplied only 10-15 hours/day). If the problem persists, Lebanon’s public debt ( 80. 39 Billion dollars) is going to get even worse and we’re going to fall gradually in a financial crisis. In addition, the pollution caused by generators is going to increase the casualties in human lives (already 93% of Beirut's population is exposed to high levels of air pollution which is a major environmental risk factor for poor health and causes 2 million premature deaths/year in the world).
