CEDRO 5: BUILDING THE PATH FOR CLEAN AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY IN LEBANON
The current crisis in Lebanon has come due to many reasons, yet the most important among them is Lebanon’s management of its energy sector. For decades now, Lebanon has relied on expensive and highly polluting sources of centralized energy, produced from large and inefficient power plants, and when traveling the distance from the power plants to the end-users, more than 35% of the power is lost due to a below-par network infrastructure in addition to the theft of electricity.
The CEDRO 5 project, with approximately 7.8 million Euros of grant and end-beneficiary funding, focuses on multiple activities simultaneously in order to assist the drive towards a more sustainable energy system.
Changing Lebanon’s behemoth centralized power paradigm is now an urgent need to reduce the dependence of Lebanon on fuel imports of fuel, which would dramatically assist in balancing our trade and safeguarding our hard currency. Moreover, shifting to a more distributed energy system offers benefits in terms of environmental performance, local economic activity and job creation, and social cohesion.
The first of these is an innovation and entrepreneurship challenge dubbed Energy Innovation Hub (http://eihublb.com/), where innovators have submitted their concepts and ideas that have the potential to transform the way we use and produce energy. Twenty-one ideas were submitted and will be mentored and filtered to eventually support the five most promising ones with considerable financing. Moreover, an online portal will be created to bring together innovators, stakeholders, and policymakers in the energy sector, to learn of opportunities and of the latest knowledge in sustainable energy through an online platform.
The European Union (EU) has long been a supporter of Lebanon in many aspects, foremost among them is the energy sector. One of these EU-supported initiatives is the UNDP implemented CEDRO 5 project.
Transforming our energy system requires multiple and far-reaching approaches and CEDRO takes on this challenge through four main activities.
