Recent indicators of the energy situation in three Arab countries (Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon) revealed a record decline in electricity production, prompting large segments of the population to adopt alternative energy generators, which are spread today in the streets and neighborhoods of cities, where the government’s electricity supply has always witnessed programmed outages, reaching… Often up to 20 hours a day.
Analysts explain the crisis as the result of decades of wars and political turmoil, which plunged their fragile economies to the bottom, and reinforced what their regimes already suffered from, including political and administrative corruption, oligarchic competition to gain influence and profit, in addition to clearly visible poor government performance.
Syria is at the forefront
In the center of the Syrian capital, Damascus, dozens of diesel and gasoline generators light up the shops of clothing sellers and food manufacturers, inside markets that used to work until late at night.
The scene is repeated in other areas, such as Mezzeh and Kafr Sousa, west of the capital, where modern residential buildings have dim light from their windows.
Most of the population today relies on small or central electricity generators, described as ampere electricity, to fill the huge shortage of government electricity, which has long been subject to programmed rationing that has ruined their lives.
Official reports indicate that the current production of existing generating stations does not exceed 1,800 megawatts, as a result of the decline in their operational imports of gas and fuel.
The latter’s imports decreased from 15,000 tons to 1,200 tons, and its gas imports decreased from 20 million cubic meters to 8 million meters per day, which prevented any supposed increase to meet a demand estimated by the Ministry of Electricity at about 7.5 thousand megawatts.
Syria has been exposed to a severe fuel crisis since the Syrian Democratic Forces took control of the main oil fields in the Deir ez-Zor and Hasakah regions in the northeast of the country.
Although Damascus was importing from Iran – its main ally – the crude oil it needed, Tehran recently reduced its supplies, on the eve of it doubling the price of a barrel of oil and demanding payment for the value of what it exports in cash, against the backdrop of economic pressures it is suffering from due to Western sanctions.
The spread of generators as an alternative
Ali, who is rising in the world of trade and contracting, invests in medium-power central generators whose current benefits several buildings in southern Damascus.
He told Al Jazeera Net that his investment in this field is much better than others, due to the increased demand for private electricity and its increased returns.
Ali secures his diesel generator needs on a regular basis through unofficial channels with influential relationships with regime institutions, but at a high cost.
He believes that the ampere trade – which is managed by influential local networks – is expanding steadily, after the Ministry of Electricity allowed the implementation of private traditional generation projects, taking advantage of a law issued by Bashar al-Assad at the end of 2022, which is the second law that regulates the country’s energy policy after another had been issued. In 2010, various local, Arab and foreign sectors were allowed to invest in the fields of generation and distribution.
The generator sector in Syria lacks official surveys and numbers showing its true size, the size of its imports, and its role in the country’s economy.
But independent reports describe it as thriving, and liken its prosperity to an economy whose wheels are turning and operating away from the eyes of the government.
“Ihsan,” a resident of the Damascus neighborhood of Al-Midan, whose family benefits from a local network, describes the generator service as expensive, and sees it as much more expensive than state electricity.
He indicated in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that the cost of a kilowatt-hour rose to 15 thousand liras on average, after the recent rise in the prices of oil derivatives. However, on the other hand, he linked his family’s forced this expensive alternative to the lack of hope for the general current to return to its normal state, as long as The war continues between the ruling regime and its opponents.
Record government deficit
The continuation of the military conflict between the Assad regime and the opposition and the turmoil in the political situation throughout the country since 2011 have led to the deterioration of the Syrian government’s expenditures on the service level, including the rehabilitation of damaged structures and the maintenance of power generation plants that are currently operating partially.
This, in addition to the recurring and severe shortage of fossil fuel supplies for operation, led to a successive decline in electricity generation production from 5,800 megawatts in 2010 to 4,000 megawatts in 2018, then 2,000 megawatts in 2021, then 1,800 megawatts in 2018. 2023.
The Director of Lighting and Electricity in Damascus Governorate, Wissam Muhammad, acknowledged the difficulty of the situation, but stressed that the funds allocated to the entire state budget are not enough to light the capital’s street lamps.
In this regard, 59% of the families included in a field study conducted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on the impact of electricity access on humanitarian needs in Syria in 2021 confirmed that the electricity they received was less than 8 hours out of 24 hours, While 30% reported that it was only less than two hours.
The study shows that the general average availability of electricity for the public services sector, such as health facilities, educational facilities, and street lighting, was less than 8 hours per day for 51% of the communities included in the survey, and less than two hours per day for 33% of these communities.
Lost wealth
With the exception of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have oil reserves that exceed their national needs. While Syria is considered one of the average countries in its production, as its production in 2010 reached about 385 thousand barrels per day, Iraq leads the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and its average production, according to Iraqi Oil Minister Hayyan Abdul Ghani, is about 4.23 million barrels per day. today.
Given that 90% to 95% of oil-producing fields are out of the control of the Syrian government, according to Syrian Oil Minister Firas Qaddour, Syria imports its gas and diesel needs to operate existing power plants from its Iranian ally, which is the same source that Iraq depends on for its gas imports. It imports about a third of its needs from its neighbor Iran.
According to local officials, Iraq produces 19,000 megawatts of electrical energy, while it actually needs 30,000 megawatts.
This deficit also contributed to the population’s dependence on private generators, and it increased even more when Iran stopped supplying it with energy, due to outstanding debts exceeding 6 billion dollars.
Environmental engineering researcher Suad Naji Al-Azzawi summarizes the reasons for the failure of successive Iraqi governments to find a solution to the dilemma of supplying electrical energy in a country considered one of the richest countries in oil and gas wealth, due to the inefficiency of government performance and rampant corruption in ministries and service institutions, whose policy of state administration is based on quotas for parties. Governance, instead of specialization, experience and efficiency in performance to provide decent electricity services.
She says in a special study: “In 2021, then Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi said that Iraq spent about 81 billion dollars on the electricity sector.”
But corruption was a strong obstacle to providing electricity to people in a stable manner, and it is an unreasonable expenditure that does not reach a solution to the problem from its roots, according to the researcher.
Al-Azzawi considers the state’s resort to purchasing electricity from neighboring countries, at exaggerated prices, and importing fuel from Iran, equivalent to $4 billion annually, and the government’s weakness in collecting consumer bill amounts and collecting revenues, and its inability to maintain systems maintenance, and reduce attacks and thefts from networks. Distribution and transformers are part of the dilemma facing Iraq.
Iraq – whose government corruption has drained billions of dollars, according to the American ABC channel – burns about 17 billion cubic meters of gas from oil wells every year, as wasted gases, due to the failure to establish the necessary infrastructure to capture it and invest it in electricity production.
This quantity is sufficient for Iraq to dispense with imports from neighboring countries, and to resume its electricity production naturally.
Corruption hinders the sustainability of electricity
Lebanon shares with Syria and Iraq the dilemma of the lack of oil derivatives to operate electricity generation plants in the country. They also share the causes of the dilemma, or parts of it, such as corruption, for example, which is rampant within the authority, the political system, and public administration teams.
In addition to the corruption that has befallen the electricity sector, according to World Bank energy expert Ali Ahmed, there is strong favoritism, which has resulted in a conflict of interests that has weakened the efficiency of the sector.
In statements reported by Human Rights Watch, Ahmed believes that this corruption “allowed the parties to escape accountability for the sector’s failures,” noting that people in power have strong interests in certain contracts, through the Electricité du Liban and the Council for Development and Reconstruction, and these contracts are what finance Political parties, as he put it.
The electrical deficit is weighing on the lives of people in various regions of Lebanon, and residents of the capital, Beirut, suffer from general power outages for long hours, similar to Tripoli in the north and Sidon in the south.
New pressure groups control the reality of lighting
With the exception of Syria, whose system does not provide any official statistics on the number of generators spread across its various cities, experts estimate that there are between 33,000 and 37,000 electrical generators in Lebanon, while the latest survey conducted by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning reveals the presence of about 48,533 generators in all governorates of Iraq.
The value of generators in Lebanon is estimated at about $3 billion, while Human Rights Watch describes the figure as a huge amount, as it meets, as an influential source, with the interests of diesel importers, and the two together explain why reforming the government electricity sector is difficult.
This pressure group exerts great influence at the local level in Lebanon, which is due, in its background, to the strong ties linking it with the actors and the decision-making system.
These lobby groups are several companies linked to some political figures that monopolize the import of diesel and the operation of collective generators.
Diesel companies have benefited – according to reports by Human Rights Watch – from the policies followed by the Lebanese governments, which have consolidated the country’s dependence on fuel imports since 2010, when the then Minister of Energy, Gebran Bassil, announced a plan to provide electricity 24 hours a day, so diesel imports increased from 1.18 million tons in 2010 to 2.35 million tons in 2019, according to the Ministry of Energy.
This increase is due to the 13 beneficiary companies increasing the percentage of their import of diesel entering Lebanon, from 27% in 2010 to 75% by 2019, turning at the same time the generator sector, according to Human Rights Watch, into almost a single and continuous source of electrical energy, which imposes its own conditions. And its pricing, as a pressure group that threatens the country with total darkness whenever it wants.
Shared risks
The spread of pollutants has been at the heart of the risks facing the environment for decades.
Reports from international organizations agree that the lighting current produced by local power generators is not without a price, especially since a large percentage of it was imported from global scrap markets – according to the Iraqi Ministry of Environment – and from unreliable industrial sources, or was rehabilitated, which means, according to environmental experts It lacks many safety standards and proper equipment.
Burning diesel and gasoline, which are usually used to operate them, releases dangerous pollutants, such as PM2.5 particles, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, in addition to heavy metals.
Fine particles are considered one of the most prominent air pollutants. They are very small particles, with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns, and they are among the most harmful pollutants.
In this regard, the IQ Air organization classifies Syria and Iraq among the 20 most polluted countries in the world.
In its assessment of the health impact and economic cost of Middle Eastern countries’ dependence on fossil fuels, Greenpeace found that the average number of premature deaths in Lebanon as a result of air pollution due to the combustion of fossil fuels reached 2,700 cases in 2018, which is the highest percentage in the Middle East and North Africa region.
The network indicates that air pollution is directly related to an increase in the incidence of ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and stroke.
The percentage of carbon oxides emitted from generating electric power and burning natural gas during oil extraction in Iraq represents about 60% of total carbon dioxide emissions, according to a World Bank report, meaning it amounts to about 108 million tons annually.
On the other hand, analysts are surprised by the delay of the three Arab countries in investing in renewable energy sources, to dispense with fossil fuels, even though energy experts confirm, for example, that Lebanon’s resources of solar and wind energy can produce electricity that exceeds the country’s needs several times, while the share of energy is Only about 7.83% of its total current production is renewable.
A sample of 1,209 Lebanese families who underwent a household survey, conducted by Human Rights Watch, and who had been living in the same house since 2019, agreed that between November 2021 and January 2022, the family received government electricity only by a percentage of 10% of the day, meaning an average of two hours per family, which is the same rate throughout the country.
The survey also showed a large disparity between the income levels of the average family, which paid local electricity generator bills at a value of 44% of its monthly income.
And families in the bottom quintile, whose bills consumed on average about 88% of their monthly income, compared to 21% of the income of the top quintile.
Observers believe that the residents’ resort to diesel and gasoline generators or to private collective networks, in various regions of Lebanon, despite the high cost of subscribing to them and the severity of their risks to the environment, was able to “somewhat” fill the supply gap in the event of a general power outage, but this service is only available. For those who can afford it.
