Camillo Stubenberg, 'Solar Killed Dirty Energy in Rural Lebanon. Here's What Other Countries Can Learn.', report, Century International, The Century Foundation, 9 March 2026
Source ID
SRC-322
Citation
Camillo Stubenberg, 'Solar Killed Dirty Energy in Rural Lebanon. Here's What Other Countries Can Learn.', report, Century International, The Century Foundation, 9 March 2026
URL or path
research/Solar Killed Dirty Energy in Rural Lebanon.pdf; page renders at research/Solar Killed Dirty Energy in Rural Lebanon_pages/
Type
Think-tank report on named primary fieldwork
Hierarchy tier
3
Published
2026-03-09
Accessed
2026-08-22
Snapshot
PDF held on disk since 3 August 2026; all 14 pages rendered at 150 dpi on 22 August 2026; pages 1 to 5, 7 and 11 read as images
The register keeps changing after the book is fixed in print. Each entry below was added to this row in the order shown.
HELD ON DISK SINCE 3 AUGUST 2026, UNREGISTERED AND UNOPENED UNTIL 22 AUGUST 2026, AND IT IS THE DOCUMENT THE SOURCE MANUSCRIPT ALREADY CITES. Source Chapter 6 line 1887 attributes to 'The Century Foundation, in a study by Camillo Stubenberg published on 9 March 2026' the two-billion figure and the feeder-line economics. This is that study. It is image-only with no text layer, which is why nobody had opened it, and it was found by a content sweep rather than by filename. METHOD, WHICH THE MANUSCRIPT DOES NOT STATE: 'This report draws on two years of PhD fieldwork, including over one hundred interviews with solar energy companies, government officials, civil society organizations, international aid organizations, and citizens'. Much of the fieldwork was in Baalbek. WHAT THE MANUSCRIPT TAKES FROM IT IS CONFIRMED AT THE PAGE. Page 3, verbatim: 'Estimates suggest that the sector generated revenues of roughly $2 billion annually, ironically almost identical to the yearly losses of EDL.' NOTE THE HEDGE 'Estimates suggest', which the manuscript drops, and note that it is REVENUES against LOSSES, which the manuscript states correctly. Page 4, verbatim: 'beyond roughly 200-300 meters, transmission losses become too high to remain economical. As a result, operators sought to concentrate as many customers as possible close to the generator and developed a strong interest in defending monopolized territories against competitors. Practices ranged from cutting the cables of rival generators that encroached on a given area to, in rarer cases, violent clashes between operators. Such conflicts were almost always between generator operators rather than between operators and customers.' Page 7 confirms the Zahle episode and names the individual: 'In 2015, generator operators in Zahle resisted attempts by Assad Nakkad, the CEO of Electricite du Zahle, to put them out of business.' AND THEN THE DOCUMENT SAYS SOMETHING THE MANUSCRIPT'S USE OF IT DOES NOT, AND IT INVERTS THE FRAMING. The manuscript uses Lebanon as a warning about what household-financed generation becomes when it matures without a regulator, an entrenched interest with a rent to defend, and says the window closes on its own. THIS REPORT RECORDS THAT THE RENT DID NOT HOLD. Page 2: 'There used to be thirty other generator owners in his area, and now there are only four'; the lead operator's 'fuel purchases have declined by 96 percent'. Page 5: 'only four of roughly thirty generator operators remained in early 2023. The reduction in the number of operators in Baalbek was not a consolidation. Most had simply packed up and sold both their generators and their microgrid cables.' The mechanism, page 5: 'a two-pronged dynamic. First, many households, impoverished by Lebanon's financial crisis, could no longer afford the rising cost of diesel-generated electricity. Second, off-grid solar home systems became cheap enough to directly outcompete the ishtirak.' And page 7: the micro-monopoly 'was effective at defending against rival generators, but it was entirely ill-equipped to resist individual acts of unsubscribing and self-provisioning.' THE DOCUMENT EXPRESSLY WARNS AGAINST THE FLATTENING THE MANUSCRIPT PERFORMS. Page 4: 'not all diesel generators in Lebanon operated according to the same economic logic'; in rural areas systems were 'often run on a nonprofit or semi-collective basis' by 'municipalities, religious associations, or community groups'; and 'treating all ishtirak operations as equally lucrative or mafia-esque flattens these important distinctions'. Page 7: 'the popular image of a generator mafia is misleading. The power of generator operators did not primarily rest on coercion.' A regulatory intervention the manuscript omits: 'In 2018, parliament passed a law obliging generators to install electricity meters; however, adoption of metered billing remains patchy'. THE LIMIT ON THE WHOLE COMPARISON, AND IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE FOR SYRIA. Page 5: 'While generators in villages and small towns were disappearing altogether, the opposite was happening in Lebanon's dense coastal cities. There, diesel generators came to carry more electrical load than ever before: multistory buildings lack sufficient roof space to install a self-sustaining number of solar panels. Thus, diesel generators disappeared from the countryside, but not the cities.' SO HOUSEHOLD SOLAR DISMANTLED AN ENTRENCHED GENERATOR ECONOMY, BUT ONLY WHERE HOUSING DENSITY PERMITTED. Damascus and Aleppo are dense cities. Any Syrian argument from the Lebanese case carries that limit. WHAT MAKES THE FINANCE WORK, AND IT ANSWERS THE BRIEF'S ADD LIST DIRECTLY. Page 7: 'the cost of off-grid solar equipment had fallen by roughly 90 percent over the past decade'; 'the competitive advantage of solar was made particularly visible through the generator's flat-rate billing model. Fixed monthly payments for ishtirak electricity greatly simplified cost-benefit calculations for households considering solar installation: dividing the upfront cost of a solar system by the monthly generator fee made the payback period immediately legible'; and solar systems were 'bundled with installation, maintenance, and financing options'. THE FINANCING PROBLEM WAS SOLVED PRIVATELY BY INSTALLERS, and the decisive enabler was a legible payback period created by a flat monthly incumbent charge. Page 3 adds the collections finding the brief wants: profitability rested on 'the social and political capacity to collect bills. Unlike EDL, which struggled to enforce payment, generator operators could rely on proximity, social pressure, and political backing to ensure compliance.' THE ANALYTICAL CONCLUSIONS AT PAGE 11 ARE THE BRIEF'S GOVERNING CLAIM WITH A DOCUMENT UNDER IT. 'Calculated per kilowatt-hour, off-grid solar will likely never outperform the economies of scale of utility-scale systems.' 'It also amplifies energy inequality, enabling energy abundance for those with space and capital while leaving poorer households in a state of near-constant energy scarcity.' 'Hundreds of megawatts of privately financed photovoltaic capacity now exist across the country. These investments represent real generation assets that should not be stranded. A forward-looking regulatory framework could gradually reintegrate distributed solar into a rehabilitated national grid, design compensation mechanisms that reward injection rather than isolation, and prioritize support for poorer households that remain energy-insecure.' 'The risk now is not that Lebanon lacks solar capacity, but that institutional inertia allows this new infrastructure to harden into a permanently fractured energy landscape.' And on the regulator: 'It took nearly two decades for the Energy Regulatory Authority to move from legislation to existence.' STATUS READ_IN_PART: pages 1 to 5, 7 and 11 are read at the rendered image. Pages 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14 are NOT read, and the endnotes are not read, so no footnote source behind the two-billion figure has been traced. Reading them is owed before drafting.
PAGE 12 READ 22 AUGUST 2026 AND THE FOOTNOTE CHAIN IS CLOSED. Its note 9, which carries the two-billion figure, cites 'Ali Ahmad, Distributed Power Generation for Lebanon. Market Assessment and Policy Pathways, World Bank, 2020'. That document is now retrieved and read at SRC-354, so the figure is traced to its origin and the source manuscript's refusal to print the generators-out-earn-EDL line is vindicated: 91 per cent of the two billion is a fuel import bill. OTHER NOTES WORTH HAVING. Note 3 cites the author's own fuller academic treatment, Camillo Stubenberg, 'Crisis-Induced Decarbonization: How Infrastructure Breakdown and Cheap Solar Are Driving Energy Transitions in the Absence of Policy', Austrian Institute for International Politics, 2026, which is NOT held and is a lead rather than a gap. Note 2 cites Zachary Davis Cuyler and Marc Ayoub, 'The Future of Lebanon's Unlikely Solar Revolution', The Century Foundation, 15 September 2025. Note 12 also cites Charlie Lawrie, 'Fossil Fuel Dependency Is the Real Cause of Lebanon's Energy Crisis', The Century Foundation, 13 February 2026. Note 10 dates the operator interviews: 'Generator owners, interviews with the author, Beirut, November 2022.' THE REPORT'S OWN PROVENANCE: it 'is part of Networks of Power, a project led by Century International fellow Zachary Cuyler'. STATUS UNCHANGED AT READ_IN_PART: pages 1 to 5, 7, 11 and 12 are now read; pages 6, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 14 are not.
PAGES 9 AND 10 READ, 22 AUGUST 2026, AND THEY CARRY THE TWO MOST TRANSFERABLE FINDINGS IN THE DOCUMENT. FIRST, THE HOUSEHOLD FINANCE MECHANISM THAT ACTUALLY WORKED, AND IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE. Page 9, verbatim: interventions ranged from 'local Islamic associations using zakat donations to finance basic solar systems for poor households, to large-scale programs run by institutions such as Al-Qard Al-Hasan (AQAH), Hezbollah's microfinance bank. AQAH offers interest-free loans and was quick to introduce dedicated solar loan programs. Customers were required to provide GOLD JEWELRY AS COLLATERAL, but REPAYMENT SCHEDULES WERE EXPLICITLY MATCHED TO HOUSEHOLDS' FORMER GENERATOR SUBSCRIPTION COSTS. If a family had previously paid $50 per month for a 2.5-ampere connection, AQAH structured repayments at roughly the same level over a period of up to two years.' Scale: a local solar contractor 'estimated that roughly half of the 1,000 systems he installed in a single year were financed through AQAH's solar loan program'. THE DESIGN PRINCIPLE IS TRANSFERABLE AND THE LENDER IS NOT. Source Chapter 6 line 1905 gropes toward a charge 'in the order of $15 to $25 a month'; the worked precedent sets the instalment at the displaced monthly bill, over up to two years, against a collateral form households already hold. Any Syrian passage using it says who the lender was. AND A POLITICAL FINDING THE MANUSCRIPT WOULD BE STRONGER FOR: 'once installed, a solar home system requires little ongoing support, making it a comparatively weak instrument for sustaining long-term political-economic dependence', and 'Electricity politics did not disappear with the diesel generator; rather, they migrated into households, transnational family networks, and political charitable institutions.' SECOND, THE MECHANISM THAT JOINS THIS CHAPTER'S TARIFF LIMB TO ITS HOUSEHOLD SOLAR LIMB, AND THE MANUSCRIPT DOES NOT HAVE IT. Page 9 sets out the village-scale sequence: 'In village after village, a familiar dynamic unfolded: a handful of customers unsubscribed, revenues declined, prices rose for remaining users, and further defections followed. The process ended with operators dismantling their networks and selling off generators. What played out at the scale of villages and small towns in the Beqaa closely mirrors what is commonly described as a UTILITY DEATH SPIRAL in larger, centralized electricity systems.' PAGE 10 THEN SHOWS IT HAPPENING TO THE STATE UTILITY AFTER A TARIFF DECISION: 'In spring 2023, when parliament DOLLARIZED EDL'S TARIFFS, thousands of households cancelled their connections altogether, a process widely described as GRID DEFECTION. As the news outlet Megaphone reported at the time, citizens QUEUED OUTSIDE EDL OFFICES TO SEVER TIES WITH THE UTILITY. As with neighborhood generators, grid defection threatens to undermine the economic basis of centralized provision even as the need for reliable electricity remains acute, raising the specter of a NATIONAL-SCALE UTILITY DEATH SPIRAL.' AND: 'Initially, the spread of solar reduced demand on the national grid, allowing EDL to provide marginally better service. Increasingly, however, this appears less like recovery than A GRADUAL LOSS OF RELEVANCE.' THE SYRIAN PARALLEL IS EXACT AND SHOULD BE DRAWN CAREFULLY: Syria raised its household tariff by an order of magnitude on 1 November 2025 at SRC-333 and SRC-334, with 2,060 MW of household solar already installed at SRC-314. That is the same first move, made in a country with more household solar than Lebanon had. It does not follow that the same outcome must occur, and the chapter states the mechanism and the difference rather than predicting. THE DENSITY LIMIT RESTATED AT PAGE 10: 'Density matters. Urban environments reduce transmission costs and provide large, concentrated customer bases, making generator operations more profitable. At the same time, dense urban architecture limits available roof space, constraining the capacity of highly local solar installations to meet high electricity demand, particularly for AIR CONDITIONING.' And the conclusion: 'Technical and market forces alone, then, are unlikely to eliminate urban dependence on diesel generators, or the political and economic power of those who operate them.' THE CLOSING SENTENCE OF THE ARGUMENT, page 10: 'What decades of regulatory efforts, protest, and international projects failed to achieve occurred quietly, through a combination of impoverishment and technological substitution. Ali's generators did not disappear because they were outlawed or defeated, but because they were rendered obsolete.' STATUS STILL READ_IN_PART: pages 1 to 5, 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 are read. PAGES 6, 8, 13 AND 14 ARE NOT, and 13 and 14 are the continuation of the notes.
READ IN FULL, 22 AUGUST 2026. All fourteen pages are now read and the status moves from READ_IN_PART to READ. PAGES 6 AND 8 ADD TWO THINGS THE CHAPTER NEEDS. Page 6 gives the two causes in the author's own words: 'First, operators lost a substantial share of their customers to poverty. Second, dramatic price drops in Chinese photovoltaic components made solar electricity more competitive than diesel-generated power.' AND IT CORROBORATES THE SOLAR-PUMPING MECHANISM FROM A SECOND COUNTRY: at Qaa in the north-eastern Beqaa the generator survived only by 'supplying electricity only for a few hours in the morning and evening to farmers who still relied on diesel power to pump water from deep wells. In the meantime, MOST HAD INSTALLED LARGE SOLAR ARRAYS TO RUN THEIR PUMPS DIRECTLY ON SUNLIGHT.' That is the same mechanism SRC-336 records for northeast Syria, where solar pumps are contributing to water-table depletion. Two independent reports, two countries, one mechanism, and it runs against the manuscript's unqualified enthusiasm for household solar. PAGE 8 EXPLAINS WHY THE ENTRENCHED INTEREST COULD NOT DEFEND ITSELF, which is the answer to the manuscript's worry that the window closes on its own: 'Generator operators mounted little opposition to solar adoption because off-grid solar systems were installed household by household, LEAVING NO CLEAR ADVERSARY TO CONFRONT.' AND IT GIVES THE REMITTANCE MECHANISM, WHICH IS DIRECTLY TRANSFERABLE: 'As Lebanon's economy contracted, remittances rose to an estimated 30 percent of GDP in 2023. The economics of solar home systems, REPLACING A RECURRING MONTHLY BILL WITH A ONE-TIME INVESTMENT, made them an especially attractive target for diasporic support.' Source Chapter 6 line 1877 says Syrians financed solar out of savings and remittances; this explains WHY remittances fund solar specifically, being a one-off ask rather than a standing commitment, and it is evidenced. Note 35 sources the remittance share to 'Lebanon Received $6.7 Billion in Remittances in 2023', L'Orient Today, 22 May 2024, so the 30 per cent is a ratio somebody formed and the numerator is 6.7 billion dollars. THE DISTRIBUTIONAL LIMB IS RESTATED HERE TOO: 'As more affluent households secured energy access through solar power, poorer households increasingly suffered from energy poverty.' PAGES 13 AND 14 ARE THE REMAINING NOTES AND THEY NAME FOUR LEADS WORTH HAVING. The author's full underlying work: Camillo Stubenberg, 'Under the Patronage of the Sun: The Technopolitics of Lebanon's Rushed Energy Transition', PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 2025, DOI 10.7298/h371-yp35, at note 34; the author is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Cornell. The grid-defection reporting at note 43: 'Thousands of Lebanese Households Unsubscribe from EDL', L'Orient Today, 13 March 2023, with note 44 citing Megaphone's 'Goodbye EDL Meters' of 29 March 2023. The source of the cost-decline claim at note 30: Hannah Ritchie, 'Solar Panel Prices Have Fallen by Around 20% Every Time Global Capacity Doubled', Our World in Data, 12 June 2024, WHICH IS A LEARNING-RATE STATEMENT AND NOT THE '90 per cent over the past decade' the body prints, so that figure's own provenance is a derivation. And the source of the least-cost conclusion at note 46: IRENA, 'Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024', 2025, WHICH THIS PROJECT DOES NOT HOLD and which is the authority behind the sentence that off-grid solar will likely never outperform the economies of scale of utility-scale systems. THAT LAST ONE IS THE MOST LOAD-BEARING UNRETRIEVED DOCUMENT LEFT IN THE LEBANON LIMB and is retrieval owed if the chapter prints the least-cost conclusion in its strong form. Note 28 names the Qaa interviewee as Bachir Matar, Mayor of Qaa, March 2023; notes 22, 23 and 26 date the Baalbek generator-owner interviews to April 2023 and notes 16 and 38 to November 2022.
NOTE 46 TESTED AND IT DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CONCLUSION IT IS CITED FOR, 22 August 2026. This report's sentence 'Calculated per kilowatt-hour, off-grid solar will likely never outperform the economies of scale of utility-scale systems' is footnoted to IRENA's Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024. That document is now retrieved and read at SRC-365 and IT IS A UTILITY-SCALE COST REPORT: across all 216 pages, rooftop returns zero occurrences, household zero, distributed solar zero, self-consumption zero, off-grid one, and residential two, both about battery storage. It publishes no off-grid or rooftop solar cost series, so it evidences one term of the comparison and not the other. Its own methodology also excludes system balancing costs associated with variable renewables, which is what a least-cost comparison between central and distributed resources would have to carry. THE CONCLUSION MAY BE RIGHT AND IT IS NOT EVIDENCED BY THE DOCUMENT CITED. Chapter 8 may report that the Century Foundation reaches that conclusion; it may not adopt it as established, and it may not cite IRENA for it.