Energy Attributes Certificates: A Novel Mechanism to Support Energy Transition in Lebanon

Abstract

Lebanon is slowly evolving towards reaching its international environmental commitments. Those commitments face many obstacles and challenges especially in terms of policies and regulations. We will see through this paper that neglecting the commercial and industrial sectors in Lebanon that consume more than 50% of the total electricity and responsible of 32.07% of emissions in the country is also delaying energy transition in the country. Indeed, there are no specific policies that regulate energy consumption and emissions for these sectors which negatively affect the progress towards achieving the country’s environmental commitments.

Through this paper, a novel mechanism that is gradually being used in many countries across the world is suggested to support a sustainable energy transition and help reaching Lebanon’s international environmental commitments. Energy attribute certificates (EACs) is a form of corporate sourcing of renewable energy that is proposed to be introduced to the Lebanese market. EACs are however faced by many criticisms from different involved stakeholders mainly in terms of their actual contribution to additionality and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions which challenges this paper’s overall objective. There are however some new market tools such as the eco-labelled certificates that could be used in association with the EACs market to help addressing the critics and to make sure that EACs would be able to support a sustainable energy transition in Lebanon. The introduction of EACs associated with a concept based on the eco-labelled certificates but specifically tailored to the Lebanese case is studied in this paper. Our study highlights the additional benefits of an EACs market in terms of positive contribution to the Lebanese GDP from one side and the improvement of some people’s living conditions from the other side.