A Citizen Assembly Pilot on Energy Transition in Lebanon

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.

The main objective of this research initiative is to conduct a citizen assembly on energy transitions. A citizens' assembly (CA) is an organized gathering of members of the public with the advice and guidance of technical experts and academics, who meet to learn about, deliberate and discuss an issue, with the aim of producing recommendation for future solutions. CAs vary in size, duration, and scale of representation. The assembly must be large enough to enable participants to form a number of small groups for deliberative activities and conversation across groups, but small enough to give members a sense of personal relatedness and comfort with one another.

The CA will be on the theme of energy transition, equity and sustainability, with a specific focus on the process of transitioning to renewable energy in an affordable and effective way. It is a way for the scientific community to decipher the complexity of an energy system to the general public. This requires both a macro and micro assessment, as well as multi-stakeholder approach.

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.
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 citizen assembly is not assuming impact in a passive sense rather in an active and direct sense. The impact beneficiaries themselves will co-produce the citizen assembly and its outputs, thus both the formative and summative benefits are expected to accrue to the following groups directly:

1. Empowering the energy oppressed poor across Lebanon's vulnerable groups
There is an energy divide in Lebanon in terms of access and affordability, we will present unique data to illustrate these facts to the communities concerned. The evidence-base, the data, the technical options, the distributional decisions will allow this community to monitor and strengthen accountability over limited resources. They will then decide energy solutions they have carefully considered and selected. The wellbeing of future populations, education, health, water supply and employment opportunity
are all inextricably linked to energy supply and are crucial for achieving prosperity. Our hope is that the combined expertise and discussions from this CA are a first step towards future research-community collaboration and action towards a renewable energy transition that serves the public interest.
Increasing the impact of research through broader citizen engagement

2. Accelerating the impact of research across disciplines towards the SDGs
Academics will benefit from an innovative methodological approach for localized initiatives for delivering on the energy transition for Lebanon and beyond. It will push academic to work collaboratively on issues directly relating to the SDGs.

3. Propel the work of civil society and NGOs who will participate in the facilitation of the citizen assembly
Lebanon has a strong civil society. Thinktanks like the Lebanon Centre for Policy Studies, Arab Development Network, Lebanon Support, Daleel Madani, Nahnu and various. The citizen assembly will be an experiment on collaboration and co-production with all these stakeholders.

3. Existing political institutions and policy makers trust in academic institutions technical and expert mediation on issues concerning communities
The citizen assembly could directly influence policy design and evaluation. There is a rare opportunity under the current popular mobilisation where the people have the ears of policymakers who and preferences for future initiatives and interventions for delivering energy solutions for Hamra.

5. Connecting with the private sector's role in developing new solutions to the energy crisis
Through the RELIEF Centres FF2030 board of entrepreneurs and startups, we have a network of companies working on renewable energy solutions who will also feed in their knowledge on the investment and financing ecosystem. They will benefit from the data that we will produce and with the nature of the engagement with the community in understanding what cost and impact energy shortages have, what different demographics groups demand preferences are.