“See that?” my friend pointed to a pylon on the hill opposite the window. “That’s the dawla.” The dawla (pronounced “dowleh”) is Arabic for state, and my hostess was telling me about an essential feature of life in contemporary Lebanon: the ability to understand when there is electricity and who is providing it. If the light on the pylon was orange, I would know that power was coming from the national grid.
If, like good Net Zero citizens, we eschew gas, it could also mean no heating, hot meals or hot showers
It was my first trip to Lebanon for almost fifteen years. In the early 2000s, I went repeatedly to research a book about the country, but this was just a personal visit to my friend and my godson, planned before the latest hostilities with Israel.
I wasn’t going to any of the areas under aerial attack and, apart from a couple of bombed-out buildings on the drive from the airport, didn’t see much evidence of conflict. In the decade and a half since my last visit, not much had changed in Lebanon. There were a few more neon signs, but otherwise the urban landscape was much the same: dusty roads, motorcyclists without helmets, old bangers you no longer see in Britain, and all manner of shopfronts serving Arabic fast food.
Except, that is, the country’s energy arrangements. The semi-collapse of Lebanon’s national energy grid Electricité du Liban means that several systems run in parallel, a network of privately-owned generators compensating for the patchy supply from the dawla.
Beirut gets priority for the national supply but Aley, the hillside city where my friend lives, depends heavily on private generators. Her apartment is supplied by a generator belonging to the owner of the building which provides electricity between 9am and midday and from 4pm until 1am. During the afternoons and overnight, there is no electricity unless the dawla kicks in.
The day is punctuated by clunks and clicks as different systems turn off and on. Due to varying levels of ampage, calculations have to be made for every appliance. Since the dawla provides 20 amps and the generator only 10, you can only put the hot water on as well as the AC units that provide some heating when the pylon light is on. When it’s off, you need to do some sums.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that, as a teacher and single parent, my friend struggles to meet extraordinarily high energy bills. Just before my visit, she had done a deal with her landlord to exchange private tuition for his son for free electricity from the generator. The arrangement reversed her previous strategy of putting on the most energy-consuming appliances when the pylon light was on; now it is better to vacuum or put on the washing machine when it’s off.
Fortunately, I turned out to be quite good at the calculations and economies involved. Thanks to a childhood plagued by a father who followed me around turning off lights, I’m quite used to going to the loo in the dark. A fondness for camping while remaining online has trained me in studying numbers on a power station. And living in Portugal, where putting on the kettle and microwave simultaneously can trip the system, was a lesson in wattage.
Even so, domestic life in Mount Lebanon brought surprises. One night, wandering down the corridor without a torch, I found myself in a cupboard rather than the bathroom. Another day three of us had to play energy detective, staring at the numbers denoting the ampage, trying to work out what was overloading the system. The periods where you just waited to be able to switch something on were less fun.
The back streets of Aley hum with the sounds of the huge units which keep buildings supplied with electricity at least part of the time. The informal network of diesel generators mushroomed as Lebanon’s energy crisis expanded from short blackouts to complete national outages in 2021. They’re an expression of both Lebanon’s entrepreneurial culture and its sectarian cronyism: you need ‘wasta’ – contacts – to get permission from the municipality to set up in the generator business. And there’s another big downside: the generators create new levels of pollution; Beirut is often engulfed in a haze of brown smog.
Many of the roofs of Aley sport solar panels, a sign of a pragmatic search for a solution to the energy crisis rather than an ecological trend. But they’re only available to those who live in houses and can afford the installation costs. Hospitals, large companies and universities make use of uninterruptible power supply systems to prevent damage to computers and medical equipment.
What strikes me most amid all these arrangements is the attitude and adaptability of the Lebanese. No one complains. And no one expects the state to do anything. When, while I’m working in a cafe, we’re suddenly plunged into darkness no one reacts at all.
You can tell a lot about the state of a country by its energy system, and a lot about its people by their response to a crisis. Which gets me to thinking: how would Britons cope in such a situation?
It’s not an abstract question. The transition to ‘clean energy’ to which Energy Minister Ed Miliband has pledged to take us by 2030 could, according to the National Energy System Operator, necessitate energy rationing – or ‘demand side flexibility’, in the NESO’s words – for households and businesses at certain times.
From a purely domestic point of view, energy rationing would mean no router to power the internet for that business meeting, no charging of the electric car and no TV for the kids. If, like good Net Zero citizens, we eschew gas, it could also mean no heating, hot meals or hot showers.
Alternatively, we could rapidly find alternative power supplies, as the Lebanese have done. Generators would seem our best bet. Since we don’t benefit from a Levantine sun, solar panels seem to be less good an option for Brits for most of the year. Perhaps the wood fires and stoves on which we cooked and warmed ourselves before the invention of electricity might make a come-back?
Mostly I hope we don’t get to find out what it’s like to live with limited electricity. But after my trip to Lebanon, part of me is very curious about how my own country would respond.
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