LEBANON: Reforming the Energy Sector and Supporting Private Sector Participation

PPIAF provided technical assistance to the government of Lebanon to help provide a roadmap of actionable items that address the issues facing the electricity sector and Lebanon’s state-owned power company, Electricite du Liban (EdL), as identified in the 2012 roadmap for electricity sector reform.

The work consisted of a financial utility model and recommendations on the electricity sector law, including creating an independent and autonomous regulator.

Earlier this year, the caretaker government published a policy statement with short and medium-term action items based on the recommendations and support provided by PPIAF. The policy statement explicitly mentions the need to “reform the governance structure by unbundling public generation assets into a separate generation company.” In addition, the policy

• mandates that the bulk of future generation capacity be realized through public-private partnerships while maintaining government control over a share of the generation portfolio for energy security and market stabilization;
• modernizes EdL’s core competency to establish a transmission system operator as the sole owner and operator of the transmission system; and
• adopts the public‐private partnership model for power distribution with the long‐term objective of a fully liberalized and regulated electricity market.

Lebanon could benefit from further support in subsequent technical assistance that helps implement the roadmap, including the recommendations on electricity sector law.