News
CATEGORY: Environment
LOCATION: Lebanon
START/END: 2013 - 2014
CONSULTANCY BUDGET: 76.158
CLIENT: UNDP Lebanon
ORIGIN OF FUNDING: UNDP Lebanon
PARTNERS: ELARD s.a.l.
LDK’s BUDGET SHARE: 47%
STAFF PROVIDED: 4
Type of Services
- Review of the existing information on the current energy demand and market trends to include renewable energy supply chains and supporting services, policies, programmes, renewable energy goals, energy mix, security, pricing, grid connection/transmission capacity, costs in handling electricity, storage handling and other pertinent information and how these could impact deployment of renewable energy;
- Provision of information on the baseline status of environmental conditions that will be affected, directly and indirectly by the NRES;
- Analysis of alternatives for fulfilling the NRES target using environmental and socio-economic criteria;
- Identification of externalities, possible price distortions and perverse subsidies from the specific NRES and provision of proposals for remedial actions;
- Provision of assistance to the NRES development team for the analysis of direct and indirect costs/benefits resulting from the implementation of the NRES;
- Provision of information on economic development and the impact that renewable energy will have on the economic development, including socio-economic impacts from the deployment of these technologies;
- Provision of advice on the scope and potential monitoring and evaluation requirements in order to limit or reduce residual impacts;
- Scoping and dissemination of results workshops.
Description
Preparation of a Strategic Environmental Assessment on the National Renewable Energy Strategy (NRES) under development in Lebanon, in order to support the development of the sector, and ensure that the environmental and socio-economic implications of the strategy are taken into consideration at the early stages of decision-making.
The overall goal of the project is to establish a tool that will assist the Ministry of Energy & Water (MoEW), at the earliest possible stages of decision making, in sustainably optimizing the NRES and fully integrating major environmental, social, and economic concerns in line with the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) guidelines developed by the Ministry of Environment (MoE). The focus of the project would be on the renewable sector of Lebanon encompassing the different technologies (i.e., wind, hydropower, bioenergy, and photovoltaics/concentrated solar power) and their phases of exploration, construction, deployment, operation and maintenance, decommissioning, and ancillary activities and infrastructure.
The SEA will be undertaken in parallel with the development of the Strategy and in close coordination with the team developing the NRES. The coordination and alignment serves to ensure that (1) environmental concerns, assets and constraints are properly accounted for in the Strategy, (2) environmental impacts are minimized, and (3) proper environmental management is applied throughout the development and implementation of the NRES.
In that respect, the SEA process adds to the planning process by requiring the setting of clear targets and objectives (especially environmental targets), by requiring that the technical team develop different options and alternatives and assess them according to those targets, by developing a database of information against which the real effects of decisions can be monitored, and by organizing an implementable and tiered public participation approach.
