Lebanon issued rules for solar systems under 1.5 MW on 9 September and withdrew them on 11 September
Lebanon is the clearest case anywhere of a population building its own electricity system because the state stopped supplying one, and this is what happened the first time the state tried to put a procedure around it. The rule lasted two days. The interesting part is not that a government retreated under pressure, but what the sequence exposes: capacity that was financed, installed and operated privately is very hard to bring back under permission after the fact, because the people who would need the permission already hold the thing it would grant. A rule written before a sector exists is a condition of entry; the same rule written afterwards is a demand that working systems be re-justified to an authority that was absent when they were installed. The referral is the substantive move rather than the cancellation, because it hands the question to a sectoral regulator that will have to decide whether to write rules a privately built fleet can live with, or rules drafted as though that fleet were not already there.
Lebanon's government issued a procedure for installing solar systems below 1.5 MW on 9 September 2026 and withdrew it on 11 September.
Joint decision no. 1234, signed by the ministers of Interior and Municipalities, Energy and Water, and Public Works and Transport, removed the requirement for Ministry of Energy and Water approval for systems under 1.5 MW and replaced it with a municipal route. An applicant filed with the municipality, or with the qaimmaqam in towns that have none, attaching sign-offs from a structural engineer and an electrical or electromechanical engineer registered with the engineers' syndicate. Those engineers also had to supervise the installation and certify on completion that the system met the applicable safety requirements. Approvals were valid for one year, within which the work had to be finished. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reports further conditions: consent from owners and co-owners, set at 75 per cent where no owners' association exists, height limits of three metres on buildings below fifteen metres and four and a half metres on taller ones, and a fifteen-day municipal review period. [UNVERIFIED] The text of the decision has not been read for this piece. The Ministry of Interior and Municipalities publishes it, but the page returned 403 to this agent, and the conditions above rest on Lebanese press accounts.
The objection was immediate, and it was about cost and delay rather than about safety. Citizens and politicians argued that the state was adding a permitting step and an expense for households already paying twice for electricity, once for rationed public supply and once for private generators. On 11 September the office of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam announced that the decision was being set aside and the subject referred to the National Electricity Regulatory Authority, to decide as it sees fit within its powers after consulting the Ministry of Environment and the relevant administrations. A second joint decision by the same three ministers appears on the ministry's website under a title recording that referral and stating that the justifications for issuing decision no. 1234 of 9 September 2026 have lapsed. [UNVERIFIED] That text has not been read either, and a lapse of justification is not necessarily the same act as a revocation.
Two days is a short life for a regulation, and the reason is the sequence. Lebanon's distributed solar was not built because a policy encouraged it. It was built because public supply failed and households, businesses and building committees paid for their own generation. IRENA records 1,505 MW of cumulative Lebanese solar capacity at the end of 2025, up from 1,081 MW a year earlier. [NEEDS DATA: how much of that is residential and behind the meter] Capacity of that kind is hard to bring under permission after the fact, because the people who would need the permission already hold the thing it would grant. A rule written for a sector that does not yet exist is a condition of entry. The same rule written for a sector that already exists is a demand that working systems be re-justified to an authority that was absent when they were installed.
It is worth being careful about what this episode does and does not show. It is not evidence that regulating distributed generation is illegitimate. Roof loading, fire risk and the competence of installers are real problems, and a fleet of this size assembled without inspection will have some of them. What the two days show is a narrower thing: that the state's leverage over infrastructure it did not build is weak, and that the moment for setting conditions is not one a government gets to choose after the fact.
The part worth following is the referral rather than the withdrawal. The question now sits with the sectoral regulator, which will have to decide whether to write rules a privately built fleet can live with or rules drafted as though the fleet were not there. pv-magazine, reporting the original decision on 11 September, described the provisions as interim, pending final rules under development by the regulator. By the time that report published, the interim provisions had been withdrawn.
Still unknown: whether decision 1234 carried fees, and at what amounts; what happens to applications filed during the two days it was in force; when the National Electricity Regulatory Authority received the referral and whether it has responded; and what prompted three ministries to act on 9 September after years in which the build-out proceeded without them.
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