Wind farms in Lebanon

ENAR

Earlier this spring, Lebanon signed its first-ever power purchase agreement (PPA) for wind energy with three separate consortiums that will build and operate wind farms in Akkar, in the north of the country. The energy ministry’s signing of the agreements represents Lebanon’s first PPA with the private sector in electricity generation as part of efforts to close an estimated 1 gigawatt gap between current electrical supply and demand in the country. Combined the wind farms will have a total generation capacity of 180 megawatts. Global wind-energy generation capacity reached 487 gigawatts by the end of 2016, according to the renewable energy policy network REN21, up 12 percent since 2015—but for Lebanon’s first venture into wind energy at this scale, many challenges and opportunities await. One of the main challenges facing the wind energy industry around the world stems from the sheer size and dimensions of wind turbine components. As wind