Rooftops: The Money That Already Showed Up
Households, shops and factories are the one funder that has already delivered at scale. Distributed solar passed 1,000MW by the end of 2023, according to the LCEC, and the plan credits this market with attracting private financing where large projects could not.
At the NREAP's average cost of about $1,000 per kilowatt, that rooftop fleet represents roughly $1 billion of mostly private spending, by LeBusiness's estimate. The 2030 plan asks the same buyers for another $1.65 billion. That money can also be lost: the NREAP estimates the 2024 war destroyed around 131MW of rooftop panels.
The state now wants to help families at the lower end of the market. Lebanon's proposed 2027 budget sets aside $11 million for the Public Corporation for Housing to lend to households buying solar systems, LBCI reported on October 8. The money should fund about 4,400 loans averaging $2,500 each, repaid at $75 a month over three years.
Applications will open only after Parliament approves the budget. Finance Minister Yassine Jaber told LBCI the allocation is expected to grow over time.
Lenders and Donors: Real Money, Small Slices
International lenders are back, but carefully. The World Bank approved a $250 million loan in October 2024 for the Lebanon Renewable Energy and System Reinforcement Project, with $220 million going to Électricité du Liban (EDL) and $30 million to the Litani River Authority. Its largest component, worth $170 million, covers grid-connected renewables and network reinforcement, including a solar plant.
Grants are much smaller. In July, the Kuwait Fund and the UNDP signed a $3 million agreement to equip seven public institutions with solar panels and efficiency upgrades. A project financed by Germany's development bank KfW covers hydropower rehabilitation and quality standards for the solar sector, working with standards agency Libnor and the Industrial Research Institute, according to L'Orient Today.
Against the full bill, these are thin slices. The Kuwaiti grant equals about 0.05% of $6.2 billion. The NREAP counts roughly $900 million in climate finance reaching Lebanon since 2012, of which only $86 million went to energy, with the European Union the largest contributor at $235 million.
Bigger development banks have mostly stayed out since the crisis. When the plan was published in September 2025, it noted that the European Investment Bank had made just one investment in Lebanon since 2019, in health, and that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development had not closed a deal there since 2019.
Energy Minister Joe Saddi wants to change that. On September 30, after meetings in Washington with the World Bank, the IFC and the guarantee agency MIGA alongside Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Jaber, he said private investors and friendly states need financial guarantees before putting money into a sector that has struggled for years. Those institutions want better governance, law enforcement, stronger bill collection and lower technical losses and illegal connections first, he said.
Private Developers: Licences Finally Turning Into Contracts
Large solar and wind farms are meant to be built and financed by private companies, which then sell electricity to the state under long contracts called power purchase agreements (PPAs). Lebanon has tried this before. In May 2022, the cabinet licensed 11 solar farms of 15MW each, and PPAs were signed in May 2023 at 5.7 US cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in the Bekaa and 6.27 cents elsewhere, for 25 years.
For comparison, the NREAP puts the average cost of EDL's conventional generation at around 27 cents per kWh. All 11 projects were still delayed, as developers struggled to raise financing and international lenders would not back them without reforms.
Saddi has been reviving them. After taking office in 2025, he gave licence holders until December 31, 2025, to meet their conditions. CMA CGM, whose sister company Merit Invest bought three of the licences in 2024, signed PPAs for 45MW in September 2025. PrimeSouth signed for a plant in the South that November, and on October 8 the ministry signed amended PPAs with C.D.N. and EONE.
That puts at least six of the 11 licences, around 90MW, back under signed contracts. None of the farms has been reported as built yet. Wind has moved even more slowly: three PPAs for 226MW of wind farms in Akkar were signed in February 2018, and the NREAP said last year they had not yet been built.
A bigger test is under way. The Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA), whose members were appointed in September 2025, 23 years after the law that created it, is gauging interest in up to five solar farms totalling 350MW, paired with 1,000MWh of batteries. Its deadline for expressions of interest has been extended twice at the request of interested companies and now falls on October 15.
Tariffs and contract lengths will only be set in a later procurement round, the ERA has said, according to MEED.
Banks: From Main Channel to Missing Link
Before 2019, local banks were a key route for green money. Under NEEREA, a programme launched by the central bank, Banque du Liban, in 2010, commercial banks offered subsidised loans for solar and efficiency projects, with about $600 million allocated to 1,000 projects by 2020, according to the NREAP. The central bank halted those subsidised loans after the crisis, according to the Arab Reform Initiative.
Smaller channels have filled part of the gap. In June 2022, Banque de l'Habitat began offering household solar loans in Lebanese pounds in partnership with the LCEC, the Arab Reform Initiative reported, and the NREAP says Dutch development bank FMO has extended credit lines to local institutions for lending to small businesses.
For the large projects, the plan's answer is mostly private capital, backed by public money that lowers the risk. It lists tools such as partial revenue guarantees, political risk insurance and currency hedging, and it floats green bonds and a dedicated sovereign green investment fund. In 2024, the UNDP, the Ministry of Environment and Cedar Oxygen launched the Lebanon Green Investment Facility with an initial $50 million, which the NREAP described as still being set up.
The Diaspora: About One Year of Remittances
Lebanese abroad sent home $5.8 billion in 2024, equal to 17.7% of GDP, according to World Bank estimates reported by L'Orient Today. The entire $6.2 billion renewables bill is only slightly larger than one year of those transfers.
Those transfers have helped many families get through the crisis. Yet the NREAP does not mention the diaspora or remittances once, a LeBusiness search of the document found. The tools it does propose, green bonds and a sovereign green fund, are the kind that could be opened to expatriate savers, in LeBusiness's view.
Diaspora-rooted capital is already in the pipeline through one route. CMA CGM, the shipping group behind three of the revived solar licences, belongs to Merit, the Saadé family's holding company, chaired by Franco-Lebanese executive Rodolphe Saadé, according to L'Orient-Le Jour.
What Investors Are Waiting For
Every funder in this story points to the same weak spot: EDL, the state utility that buys the power. The NREAP says budget transfers to EDL equalled about 3.8% of GDP a year over the past decade. It also cites Karpowership, whose floating power plants stopped supplying Lebanon in 2021 over payment delays.
Reform is moving, but unevenly. On October 6, Saddi said treasury advances to EDL had stopped and that the ERA is preparing licences for private power generation and distribution in the coming months. In September, the Higher Council for Privatisation and Partnership discussed turning EDL into a company but deferred a decision on the draft decree, MEED reported.
On that same October 6, Saddi announced he would stop attending cabinet sessions until the government dealt seriously with the energy sector, as a global fuel crisis worsened. At the Beirut conference in September, he had warned that Lebanon was entering "a very delicate period" and should not depend on a single source of supply.
For private money, the first hard signal comes on October 15, when the ERA's window for the 350MW solar and battery programme closes.
