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Rokia Raslan
 Power Infrastructure in Egypt. Copyrights: Rémih The past summer has seen something that many Egyptians had long forgotten: rolling power blackouts. Reports have cited that these month-long power cuts have affected everyday life for Egyptians in many ways. The outages stranded passengers on the Cairo Metro, raised concerns about night time safety and contributed to water supply interruption. Over a period of over a month the frequency of power cuts increased dramatically and were mapped by the crowd-mapping website, Kahrabtak. Power outages in some areas lasted 18 hours a day, hitting poorer residential districts especially hard and prompting protests in Fayoum, Gharbiya and Giza among others.
Continue reading Empowering Egypt: Challenges
Karim Elgendy
In celebrating this year’s World Green Building Week, Carboun has released a visual guide to energy use in buildings with the goal of explaining the overall state of energy use in the region and the significance of buildings as a major sector in energy consumption. It also aims to comparatively explain the nuances of the major trends of energy use in buildings as a baseline analysis for further research. The visual guide, which was researched and designed by Karim Elgendy with additional contributions from a small research team, was based on raw data obtained from the International Energy Agency and the World Bank. Copyrights for all infographics are reserved for Carboun. No reproduction or republishing of any infographic or part thereof is permitted without prior written consent from the author.
Continue reading A Visual Guide to Energy Use in Buildings in the Middle East
Marie Tyl
The institutional and legal setups of the Lebanese power sector define the decision making mechanisms, and identify the role of different stakeholders from the national electric utility, Electricite du Liban (EDL), to the Council of Ministers. In their current form, such laws and regulations do not grant EDL the tools and capabilities that would enable it to operate at the required standards and deliver reliable 24/7 electricity. Nor do they entice the utility to optimize its performance. Most importantly, the current setup largely exposes the power sector to political influence and their short-sighted calculations, which leads to the inefficient management of human resources, among other adverse results. Continue reading Institutional and Legal Challenges to 24/7 electricity in Lebanon
Marc Ziade
As Lebanon’s economy recovered from the Civil War, demand grew substantially and surpassed additional capacity of the current electricity generation levels. Power shortages progressively became the norm with some regions barely receiving 12 hours of electricity supply on some days.
The technical challenges that prevent sufficient volumes of electricity from getting reliably delivered to end-users span across the entire power system value chain: from insufficient capacity to large losses in the transmission and distribution networks. Continue reading Technical Challenges to 24/7 electricity in Lebanon
Guy El Khoury
A year ago, in March 2011, a tsunami swept parts of the eastern coast of Japan and caused a major accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant, leading to widespread radioactive material leakage and a sharp increase in radioactivity in nearby areas. Being the most notable accident since Chernobyl, it restarted the debate on nuclear energy option both in Japan and around the world. In Germany, this debate soon led to a decision to terminate the federation’s civilian nuclear program with a commitment to develop renewable energy alternatives, as well as additional thermal power plants, to cover the energy shortfall. A similar debate on nuclear energy has also emerged in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) where a number of countries have been exploring nuclear energy option for years, but have not been able to turn their nuclear ambitions to realities due to their lack of technical capability, fear of nuclear proliferation, and lack of sufficient financial resources. This debate was further brought to the fore with the recent move by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to develop a civilian nuclear program and the operation of the Bushehr plant in Iran, and has proven to be quite divisive with strong positions arguing for and against nuclear energy
Continue reading Nuclear Desert
Guy El Khoury
From Electricity Concessions to National Grid
1885 is generally considered as the birth year of the electricity network in Lebanon. It is the year where the first concession for a network of gas lighting was established in Beirut when the city was still under Ottoman rule. Over the following decades, the development of the electricity infrastructure across the country was carried out by similar independent regional concessions.
Although the electricity network progressively expanded to cover major cities of the country, this scheme of infrastructure development failed to benefit all citizens and regions equally. Industrial development for example was only concentrated in areas where concessions provided reliable supply (Beirut suburbs and Chekka in the North).
It is only in the early 1960s that the improvement of access to electricity became a government priority. In fact, electrification was a key pillar of nation-building efforts spearheaded by president Fouad Chehab (1958 – 1964), who saw extending the electricity network to the entire Lebanese territory and unifying tariff schemes across the country as a guarantee for reliable and equal access to electricity for all citizens.
Continue reading The Power Sector in Lebanon
Lara El Saad
Recognised as one of the world’s largest oil producers, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, holds 94% of the country’s proven oil reserves and 90% of its natural gas, making it the wealthiest of the seven emirates in the federation. In recent years, and despite the recent economic downturn, Abu Dhabi maintained a steady pace of development that was accompanied with steady increases in energy demand and consumption.
This growth of energy demand and consumption has been as result of a number factors. Prime amongst which is economic growth and the demographic pressures of a growing population. But equally important to these factors are the heavy subsidies on the domestic energy market, which encourages overconsumption, and the heavy subsidies on domestic water use, which play a major factor in the growth of energy use in Abu Dhabi.
Continue reading Averting Crisis: Managing Energy Use in Abu Dhabi
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