American University of Beirut

Abstract. Between October 8, 2023 and the ceasefire signed on November 27, 2024, the death toll from Israeli strikes in Lebanon is estimated at close to 4,000 people. Armed aggression did not end with the ceasefire and continues at the time of writing. This paper focuses on a narrower but important facet of the war’s toll that is often overlooked: the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the destruction of photovoltaic (PV) panels. Some of this damage is severe in ways that are often missed, particularly the loss of the country’s rapidly growing solar energy infrastructure. As Lebanon’s public electricity system continued to collapse in recent years, solar power had emerged as one of the most viable, and in many cases the only, alternative energy source for households, businesses, and farms. The conflict did not just destroy this infrastructure; it abruptly reversed years of organic transition toward clean energy, forcing renewed reliance on diesel generators and fossil fuels and directly increasing carbon emissions and environmental degradation. Moreover, internal migration from the border towns and villages of South Lebanon to cities further north increased pressure on the infrastructure of those destination cities, with the inevitable rise in reliance on diesel generators and associated emissions. In the absence of any government-led reconstruction or rehabilitation plan, the country’s pre-conflict energy trajectory has not only been interrupted but actively reversed, and investment in solar energy to replace destroyed infrastructure is likely to remain limited as long as the risk of aggression continues.