Lebanon’s electricity sector has long been emblematic of the country’s wider governance collapse. Most citizens now receive barely four to six hours of state-supplied power a day, while dependence on private diesel generators subscription has become near-universal, leaving households and businesses facing some of the highest electricity costs globally. Years of political patronage, fuel-supply scandals, chronic non-collection of bills and the absence of credible leadership have drained more than $40bn from the system.

The current government finally established the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) in September 2025. LIMS argued that activating and empowering the ERA is the linchpin of any meaningful reform since under existing law, the ERA alone is empowered to license new entrants. For decades, the vacuum created by the ERA’s non-appointment effectively shut private firms out of legal generation and distribution, leaving illegal diesel generator operators to fill the gap.

This dysfunction has spurred a bottom-up transformation. As generator prices soared and Électricité du Liban (EDL) faltered, households, businesses, and municipalities quietly installed more solar capacity over the past five years. A de facto decentralized energy system has emerged, one that now outperforms the state utility. Local actors have experimented with hybrid solutions combining generators and renewables, alongside innovations in metering and bill collection that have delivered more reliable and competitively priced power. These community-based systems have offered immediate relief where the state has failed.

LIMS contends that the ERA’s strategic choice is stark: either engage with this reality and build reform from the bottom up, learning from models that have demonstrably worked in Lebanon, or revert to the top-down, central-planning approaches favoured by past ministers, which have repeatedly ended in failure. A strong ERA, LIMS argues, should immediately license successful local initiatives, impose modern technical standards, and encourage generator operators to converge towards compliance. Bringing these networks under formal regulation would open the door for EDL to sell electricity to them at wholesale rates, allowing them to distribute it retail while leveraging their superior collection rates. Solving the collection problem would provide EDL with the revenue needed to increase supply hours, ultimately reducing costs for consumers.

Such an approach would allow the sector to regenerate from the local level upward, without waiting for grand, unfunded national schemes to materialize. In essence, the ERA’s core mission should be to acknowledge private investment that has already taken place, foster competition, and raise standards across the parallel market by bringing it into the legal fold.

• How Does Renewable Energy Provide Independence For Lebanon? October 3, 2025: Beirut 24, Video interview (AR)
• Electricity In Lebanon: Decades Of False Promises And Temporary Solutions For A Permanent Crisis. October 8, 2025: Alhurra, Article (AR)       
• More Important Than The Circular Is The Seriousness In Its Implementation, And The Reason Behind The Electricity Crisis Is Very Simple: The State’s Incompetence And Mismanagement. October 13, 2025: El-Shark, Article (AR)
• The Generators Are Baiting The State… Will The Bill Decrease? October 14, 2025: Al Modon, Article (AR)
• Between Darkness And Light… Lebanon At A Crossroads. October 16, 2025: Alhurra, Article (AR)
• Electricity From Crisis To Solution: Solar Energy Through Public-Private Partnership. October 17, 2025: This Is Lebanon, Video interview (AR)
• Decentralization In Electricity… Will It End 30 Years Of Darkness In Lebanon? October 24, 2025: CNBC, Video interview (AR)
• Strengthening Electricity Cooperation Between Neighboring Countries: Jordan Is Ready… What About Lebanon And Syria? October 27, 2025: Annahar, Article (AR)