The Journey to Renewable Energy Starts with a Map
At the December 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference, Saad Hariri, then Prime Minister of Lebanon, announced his country’s new target for renewable energy: 12% of the national energy mix, to be achieved by 2020. This prompted an intense wind-mapping effort that concluded a year later, with an estimate that Lebanon’s onshore windpower potential is 6.1 gigawatts (GW)—more than a third of current consumption—said Pierre El-Khoury, Manager of the Lebanese Energy Ministry’s Center for Energy Conservation.
El-Khoury outlined Lebanon’s wind-mapping exercise at a Washington workshop on renewable energy resource mapping hosted by the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) May 9. The Lebanese wind atlas, developed in collaboration with GL Garrad Hassan and Partners, and financed by UNDP and Spain, has identified eight optimal sites for wind farms, of which three will be selected for development. El-Khoury and others cited the government commitment to a target for renewable energy as a “main driver” of the resource mapping that followed.
