218 J. OBEID
To mitigate the land issues, rooftop solar PV has developed as the
most common renewable energy projects across Palestine. The potential
for rooftop solar is 530 MW in West Bank and 160 MW in Gaza. 28
Due to the political context, the grid is divided into three unconnected
zones and can only handle renewable energy integration up to 5 MWp
capacity, therefore hindering large-scale projects. The ability to attract
funding and to provide sovereign guarantee for the private sector in PPAs
is hindered by the lack of political stability and future certainty. Past experience of the Palestinian Authority in sovereign guarantee provided in
2004 for Gaza’s Independent Power Producer (IPP) and resulting in
bulky take-or-pay charges, also decreases the Authority’s willingness to
provide further guarantees to new projects, adding further challenges to
future investments in renewable energy.
Opportunity of Challenging the Status Quo
Lebanon: The Spread of the Decentralized Model
Distributed energy generation decentralizes power systems and optimizes
the costs by cutting down on the distribution and transmission costs
and the otherwise necessary system flexibility measures. The potential is
substantial in reducing the losses of the state-owned electricity utility,
Électricité du Liban (EDL), which receives hefty treasury transfers to
cover the electricity subsidies and the technical and non-technical losses.
Distributed renewable energy models can change the governance structure by strengthening local authority, and can get around the bottlenecks
and political conflicts in Lebanon, which have been preventing any
improvements in the energy sector in the past two decades.
In the Lebanese context, political power is not monopolized by one
entity, but power-sharing is conceptualized through a coalition of political parties in the central government. These parties, however, only share
their own aspirations for dividends in terms of influence and/or financial
returns, rather than a common vision, which results in chronic bottlenecks
and political clashes, hindering the government from executing policies
and spilling into the various sectors.
Politics in Lebanon cause a dilemma: Parties in the parliament endorse
policies and laws, and the government, which comprises more or less
the same parliamentarian representation of parties, fails to execute them,
for no declared reason. The power sector is a true illustration of that
To mitigate the land issues, rooftop solar PV has developed as the
most common renewable energy projects across Palestine. The potential
for rooftop solar is 530 MW in West Bank and 160 MW in Gaza. 28
Due to the political context, the grid is divided into three unconnected
zones and can only handle renewable energy integration up to 5 MWp
capacity, therefore hindering large-scale projects. The ability to attract
funding and to provide sovereign guarantee for the private sector in PPAs
is hindered by the lack of political stability and future certainty. Past experience of the Palestinian Authority in sovereign guarantee provided in
2004 for Gaza’s Independent Power Producer (IPP) and resulting in
bulky take-or-pay charges, also decreases the Authority’s willingness to
provide further guarantees to new projects, adding further challenges to
future investments in renewable energy.
Opportunity of Challenging the Status Quo
Lebanon: The Spread of the Decentralized Model
Distributed energy generation decentralizes power systems and optimizes
the costs by cutting down on the distribution and transmission costs
and the otherwise necessary system flexibility measures. The potential is
substantial in reducing the losses of the state-owned electricity utility,
Électricité du Liban (EDL), which receives hefty treasury transfers to
cover the electricity subsidies and the technical and non-technical losses.
Distributed renewable energy models can change the governance structure by strengthening local authority, and can get around the bottlenecks
and political conflicts in Lebanon, which have been preventing any
improvements in the energy sector in the past two decades.
In the Lebanese context, political power is not monopolized by one
entity, but power-sharing is conceptualized through a coalition of political parties in the central government. These parties, however, only share
their own aspirations for dividends in terms of influence and/or financial
returns, rather than a common vision, which results in chronic bottlenecks
and political clashes, hindering the government from executing policies
and spilling into the various sectors.
Politics in Lebanon cause a dilemma: Parties in the parliament endorse
policies and laws, and the government, which comprises more or less
the same parliamentarian representation of parties, fails to execute them,
for no declared reason. The power sector is a true illustration of that