A Citizen Assembly Pilot on Energy Transition in Lebanon

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Lebanon, like some other small countries in the Global South faces chronic energy shortages from an ageing energy infrastructure that relies on fossil fuels. This has led to energy poverty across Lebanon for vulnerable groups including over a million refugees from Syria and those already in refugee camps from prior waves of displacement. The future of this energy system is being contested between visions that imagine a future where newly-discovered gas supplies from an untapped gas basin will solve this energy crisis, to the new social movement that has emerged calling for green energy to end the daily power cuts and extremely high level of pollution caused by diesel generators. We will be running a pilot research and engagement initiative in the form of a citizen assembly focusing on energy transition in the locality of Hamra in the Lebanese capital of Beirut where we have been working to collect an extensive household and building data set. This presents an opportunity for the public to use the knowledge and energy data gathered by The RELIEF Centre researchers at a critical moment where new energy reforms in the country are being negotiated. We therefore seek to find co-designed solutions to the energy crisis in Lebanon (SDG 7 ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all) through a more scaled up, systematic, consistently engaged, deliberative method of citizen science, namely a citizen assembly. The main objectives of this citizen assembly are:1. to conduct a one-day citizen assembly (CA) on energy transition in Beirut in February 2019 for 50 randomly selected (representative sample) of participants. The CA will produce new bottom-up ideas for solutions to a chronic problem to public service energy provision at a moment where an opportunity for structural change has emerged. a. RELIEF researchers will present data they have gathered, alongside energy experts with specific knowledge of local and national technical and policy challenges. b. conducts a participant-led discussion about how these challenges are experienced by participants and their households in everyday life. c. engineers and innovators will present a range of available engineering, policy and legal solutions, and the costs and benefits of each solution. d. Finally, participants will engage in further discussion and deliberation activities facilitated by experts from the wider network/community of practise to produce recommendations about the energy solutions most appropriate for their needs and the problems they experience. 2. to produce briefings and presentations of a localised and publicly accessible narrative about energy transitions in English and Arabic to be used during the citizen assembly based on data on energy, energy use, environmental data, case studies and expert views. 3. to produce a toolkit about how to organise, frame and conduct citizen assemblies on the SDGs using this pilot as an example of the kind of material, research, and preparation required. The benefits and expected impacts for the energy poor communities and the academic community will be in finding ways to talk to each other and to policy makers, amplifying the work of civil society organisations and accelerating the achievement of SDG7 and other SDGs relating to health, the environment and jobs.The citizen assembly will allow us to produce a toolkit on how to expand the method to other SDGs which will hopefully encourage its use by academics across the world. It will offer reflexive and useful insights into how methodological innovation in the way research is produced and disseminated by expanding and scaling up the use of CA's as a deliberative process between academics, experts, activists and residents. The CA will also directly inform a MOOC on energy transitions that will be developed separately by the RELIEF Centre later in the year.