Lebanon Will Have 3 Wind Farms by 2020

Finally, for the first time in history, and many years too late, the Lebanese government will buy energy from the private sector which will generate it from a renewable source: wind.

This week, the cabinet gave three companies licenses to build wind farms in Lebanon’s Akkar region.

The wind farms are expected to generate around 200MW of power, enough for 200,000 households in Lebanon.

The law which OKs buying electricity from the private sector dates back to 2002, and was updated in 2010. Now, in 2017, projects have finally been sanctioned, 15 years after the first law was passed.

This is great news, especially with talk about billions of your dollars being spent on temporary, environmentally-unfriendly power ships. This at a time the government is trying to hike taxes across the board… It’s unacceptable that billions of dollars be spent on a temporary fix for the electricity, when more permanent, and more importantly, sustainable options can happen.

The government should loosen up laws on who can generate electricity in Lebanon. Especially on renewable energy. I don’t get how people are allowed to run diesel power generators in neighborhoods for decades now, but it takes so long to give a permit and allow production of clean power to help close the massive power gap in this tiny country.

Wind farms, solar farms, hydroelectric dams that don’t destroy entire ecosystems and heritage sites like the Janna Dam disaster, are all viable options, that will cost the taxpayer less, and slow down the butchering of our garbage-drenched, toxically-polluted environment.

Then again, the politicians won’t make as much money from no “moteurs” and dirty sources of energy, so, we need to keep an eye out and pressure up to move towards the private sector and private citizens being allowed to generate clean energy.

Anyway, the companies have 18 months to do an environmental impact assessment, and then another 18 months to complete construction of the wind farms. So, in 2020, we should have 3 wind farms in Akkar, generating 200MW of power.