Alix Chaplain

Éric Verdeil
email: eric.verdeil@sciencespo.fr

Governing Hybridized Electricity Systems: The Case of Decentralized Electricity in Lebanon

Keywords: Lebanon, electricity, solar power, distributed energy, diesel generator

Policymakers see decentralized electricity supply as a way to both decarbonize energy systems and to fill the gap of electricity access in many countries where strong growth leave the grid lagging behind. This article sheds some light on the case of countries such as Lebanon, where diesel-fueled decentralized electricity systems have existed for years and increasingly coexist with, rather than being replaced by, solar powered systems. It is based on a synthesis of public quantitative data and qualitative information gathered through surveys. The article argues that understanding such dynamics involves an analysis, not only of the technological and socioeconomic determinants of the adoption of decentralized energy technologies but also of the political struggles between the various actors, with a particular focus on corporate actors, and wealthy users. In addition, the article shows how different political temporalities play in reproducing or opening the assemblage of technologies and interests that shape the hybridized energy landscape. The article also shows that hybridization has repercussions on the energy configuration as a whole, both in the evolving market share of each technology but also by deeply fragmenting the access to electricity along social and territorial lines and by pushing essential private actors to disconnect from the grid. As a conclusion, the promises of sustainable transitions need to be critically examined in light of these trends.

Introduction

Energy decentralization increasingly features in many policy and scholarly accounts as a way to ease energy transition away from fossil fuels and, in some cases from the centralized grid itself [START_REF] Lopez | L'ordre électrique: infrastructures énergétiques et territoires[END_REF][START_REF] Thombs | When Democracy Meets Energy Transitions: A Typology of Social Power and Energy System Scale[END_REF]. In developing economies where electrification is lagging behind, particularly in rural and remote areas, policymakers promote decentralized energy generation and distribution as a way to improve access to electricity in the absence of the grid (REN21, 2021; UNCTAD, 2017). These initiatives share an understanding of decentralized energy, seen mostly as harnessing renewable sources, with a strong emphasis on solar photovoltaics. This set of technologies is developing through public policies that organize coordination between public authorities, utilities, and private actors incentivized through norms, subsidies, and market instruments.

However, the processes and the factors of energy decentralization remain understudied. In practice, many of the decentralized systems include fossil fuel-based gensets [START_REF] Berthelemy | Introduction," Field Actions Science Reports[END_REF][START_REF] Jaglin | Electricity Autonomy and Power Grids in Africa: from Rural Experiments to Urban Hybridizations[END_REF]. Both international organizations and social sciences energy studies have relatively overlooked cases where decentralized electricity generation and distribution have existed for years, as a from-below and unplanned response to chronic power cuts and electricity crisis, massively using diesel gensets such as in Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, etc. (Anwar, 2015; Dalberg/Access to Energy Institute, 2019; [START_REF] Istepanian | Iraq's Electricity Crisis[END_REF]. Often illegal and at the very least not monitored nor regulated by public authorities, these systems evolved over time into pervasive and entrenched socio-technical systems in (mostly) urban settlements (Abi Ghanem, 2017). Therefore, it is misleading to analyze this kind of energy decentralization observed in many Southern countries through the lens of transition. Rather it should be understood as a diversification of energy sources and technology, which then raises the question of their coexistence. The notion of hybridization encapsulates this reality, defined as "the coexistence and/or coproduction of infrastructure systems constituted by interrelating heterogeneous elements," which are characterized by the fact that they "generally overlap and co-exist rather than displace each other" (Coutard and Rutherford, 2016a: 11).

Recent research insisted on the necessity to understand hybridization not only through the heterogeneity of distinct socio-technical systems according to place and social groups, but also on their articulation and interplay at the level of urban configurations [START_REF] Jaglin | Energie électrique décentralisée et réseau municipal : hautes tensions autour d'un bien commun urbain dans la province du Western Cape (Afrique du Sud)[END_REF][START_REF] Rateau | Co-Production of Access and Hybridisation of Configurations: A Socio-Technical Approach to Urban Electricity in Cotonou and Ibadan[END_REF]. Beyond a comparative assessment of the technologies through their cost and their appropriation by users, this article shifts the focus on the political interests and the struggles between different groups of users and investors supporting these competing technologies. It argues that the changes in the energy landscape can be understood by unravelling the balance of power between the economic groups, by deciphering their political practices but also by understanding how shifting political and economic contexts create opportunities for emerging interests to destabilize incumbent actors. As a result, this article underscores the highly contested and unruly nature of this process.

The Lebanese case provides an opportunity to conceptualize this articulation of sociotechnical and political factors in the hybridization of electricity configurations. In this country, diesel-based decentralized electricity systems have existed for more than 30 years as a backup solution for persisting grid failures. More recently, industrial and commercial firms, as well as wealthy households adopted new energy technologies (renewable energy generation, batteries, multisource systems), adding a new layer of complexity. The article highlights the constantly evolving assemblage of technologies, actors, norms, political and social practices that shape the process of socio-technical change. While identifying three trends of socio-technical decentralization in the electricity sector, it unpacks the diverging and conflicting interests at play and the political economy they shape. It allows us to understand how incumbent actors locked the electricity system in a suboptimal state, and to discuss how emerging actors try to take advantage of the changing conditions, due to the current crisis, to reshape it.

A Framework for Analyzing the Politics of Electric Hybridization

The field of urban infrastructure studies has opened up widely to Southern cities in the last decade which has led to significant challenges to the dominant paradigms (Coutard and Rutherford, 2016b;[START_REF] Furlong | STS Beyond the 'Modern Infrastructure Ideal': Extending Theory by Engaging With Infrastructure Challenges in the South[END_REF][START_REF] Jaglin | Networked Services and Features of African Urbanization: Other Path Toward Globalization[END_REF]. In the face of absent or failed conventional infrastructure (centralized networks of water provision, electric grid …), many scholars have developed new conceptualizations to make sense of alternative infrastructural initiatives where individuals, local communities, and sometimes local entrepreneurs, are the main actors as the state is mostly absent, both as a provider and as a regulator. These works take stock of the dominant urban poverty and widespread informality in which these initiatives are striving and of which they take advantage, because of flexibility, reactivity and agency, which led prominent scholar Abdulmaliq Simone to emphasize the power of "human infrastructure" [START_REF] Simone | People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg[END_REF]. Looked at from a perspective of urban political ecology, this infrastructural landscape has been analyzed as "heterogeneous infrastructure configurations," which is used to contrast the uniformity of the modern infrastructure ideal and emphasize the "continuous change" it is undergoing [START_REF] Lawhon | Thinking Through Heterogeneous Infrastructure Configurations[END_REF].

In this context, the notion of hybridization implies the coexistence of many diverse decentralized systems interplaying between themselves and the grid (Coutard and Rutherford, 2016b). In this sense, it differs from the notion of infrastructuralization that accounts for a process of "stabilization," "perpetuation," and "extension" (through generalization) of socio-technical systems (Mathieu-Fritz, 2017: 321). Hybridization implies an increase in the degree of heterogeneity in the system. Technological innovations or adaptations and the socioeconomic differentiation at the level of urban configurations are recognized drivers of change [START_REF] Rateau | Co-Production of Access and Hybridisation of Configurations: A Socio-Technical Approach to Urban Electricity in Cotonou and Ibadan[END_REF].

In addition to technological and socioeconomic factors, the political dynamics do weight in this process. Several researches examined the politics of decentralized energy systems and their ability to deliver sustainable futures in ecological as well as political terms (Adil and Ko, 2016;[START_REF] Burke | Political Power and Renewable Energy Futures: A Critical Review[END_REF][START_REF] Thombs | When Democracy Meets Energy Transitions: A Typology of Social Power and Energy System Scale[END_REF]. Nevertheless, they mostly focus on Western contexts, and seek to probe a relation between decentralized energy and democracy. They see politics as an outcome rather than a factor shaping the dynamics of electrical hybridization. Other research explored the politics of urban electric grids and how it reflects urban politics and struggles at large, and shapes it in return (Luque-Ayala and Silver, 2016). Here, we argue that it is beneficial to analyze more specifically the relations between the socio-technical arrangements that shape the hybridization process, and the political practices and forms of power actors involved in the hybridization process implement to sustain their interests.

The article asks the question: how do the political interests and practices associated with the various technologies of decentralized energy systems interplay to explain the evolution of the decentralized energy landscape? We analyze decentralized energy systems according to their socio-technical diversity (conventional grid, diesel-based generators' mini-grids, solar and hybrid mini-grids) and the socio-political profile of the users and investors interested in their development. We also examine the political interactions that take place between these actors, at several scales or in various arenas of action. First, we consider public policy instruments that shape the market [START_REF] Lascoumes | Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through Its Instruments-From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation[END_REF]. The state and other stakeholders seek to introduce technological change through legal and financial instruments. This set of actions involves adapting the law and regulations by mobilizing administrative and political resources, mobilizing money lenders, and mobilizing local financial systems to support investments. The implementation of such programs needs to take into account the targeted publics, and how these programs can take advantage of the new instruments [START_REF] Rocher | Dynamics, Tensions, Resistance in Solar Energy Development in Tunisia[END_REF]. Investors (companies and households) need to secure access to funding and expertise, which involve building trust with financial institutions and/or mobilizing political support (through clientelist relationships). Other political practices are aimed at controlling the functioning of certain infrastructure and to defend its market share. Particularly useful for understanding energy landscapes, Mitchell's conceptualization of "power from within the energy system" emphasizes the way actors gain an infrastructural power by implementing practices such as alliances, blockades, monopolies, or cartels to impose their interests and in some case impose technological lock-in (Mitchell, 2011: 12;[START_REF] Unruh | Understanding Carbon Lock-In[END_REF][START_REF] Verdeil | Beirut, Metropolis of Darkness and the Politics of Urban Electricity Grids[END_REF]. Eventually, we also take into account political practices which criticize and shame incumbent actors to legitimize new models [START_REF] Hood | The Blame Game: Spin, Bureaucracy, and Self-Preservation in Government The Blame Game[END_REF]. Advocating and streamlining new models, technically and financially, is part of the political game; it is a way to promote new actors and technologies knocking at the door.

In the article we analyze how political practices from incumbent players and newcomers shape the process of electric hybridization, which favor or curb the unfolding of various decentralized (renewable and fossil-based) technologies of generation and distribution.

Methods

The study of this complex and evolving situation relied on several research methods, both quantitative and qualitative. To understand the socioeconomic profiles of investors and users, we first collected quantitative data on the energy grid, and on the use of gensets and hybrid systems. In a country where official statistics are scarce and poorly reliable, it is a challenge. The national utility Electricité du Liban (EDL) does not publish annual reports. Ministerial policy papers constitute rare public sources providing figures, although they are possibly biased [START_REF] Bassil | Plan stratégique national pour le secteur de l'électricité[END_REF]Ministry of Energy and Water, 2019). The administration for statistics published aggregated datasets on household and company characteristics, but with little information on electricity practices beyond an estimation of users of generators in 2007and 2017(Central Administration of Statistics [CAS], 2008;2020). Several World Bank reports provided indirect data on generation and thus on gensets (Ahmad, 2020a;World Bank, 2008). For hybrid and renewable systems, we were able to access to databases compiled by the CEDRO initiative at UNDP and by the Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), the Ministry's arm for renewable energy in Lebanon. During a three-month internship at the LCEC in 2019, one of the authors, Alix Chaplain, was able to compute and map the 2018 database, which allowed for crossing variables. We updated it with the latest report (2019) [START_REF] Jabbour | The 2019 Solar PV Status Report for Lebanon[END_REF], while scattered data on 2020 and 2021 are available in the press and social media.

The qualitative part of the research focuses more on policy and politics. It combines surveys from two periods. First, one of the authors, Éric Verdeil, carried out several interviews in 2012 on the crisis of the Lebanese electricity systems with high-ranking policymakers and industrialists, providing insights on the policy about diesel-generators. In addition to this, since 2018, Chaplain carried out 93 fieldwork visits and interviews: 25 with suppliers of renewable equipment, 13 with representatives of international and non-governmental organizations, 14 with national political actors, two with banking institutions, 19 with local elected officials or local public actors, seven with residential consumers, and, finally, 13 with industrial and commercial companies with renewable systems. We either recorded the semi-structured interviews or, in cases when the interviewee objected to being recorded, we took notes. The interviews dealt with the technologies in use, the perception of the market, and the policy regulations bottlenecks. Email exchanges and video-calls prolonged the first contacts during the COVID period, which limited the scope of the data collected.

Since October 2019, a series of dramatic events precipitated political changes in Lebanon and triggered an economic and financial crisis that deeply destabilized the electric sector, including the alternatives to the grid. This destabilization seems to have opened the door for new arrangements. Indeed, many new claims emerged to radicalize the shift towards new technologies and reshuffling the governance and actors' systems involved in the energy sector, while emergency investments in backup solar and hybrid systems seemed to prefigure a new energy future, although one still full of uncertainty. We tried to follow these changes during our fieldwork in the spring of 2021, and through continually reviewing press and online documentation. These results remain fragile both because of scarce data and ongoing changes.

Policy and Politics of Decentralized Electricity Generation

In Lebanon, the national electricity utility, EDL, never recovered from the damages during the Civil war despite important reconstruction efforts supported by international aid during the 1990s [START_REF] Verdeil | Electricité et territoires : un regard sur la crise libanaise[END_REF]. Since the mid-2000s and until 2019, in the face of increasing demand, the power cuts that had been reduced to an average of 3-4 hours a day nationally, surged and reached up to 12 hours a day in some regions, depending on the season (Ahmad, 2020a). The crisis comes from a rising gap between demand and supply. It is estimated that unmet demand rose from 22 percent of the total demand in 2008 to 38 percent in 2018 (Ahmad, 2020a). The persisting under-supply resulted from the lack of investments in new generation capacity after 2002. The lack of maintenance of old turbines and the mismanagement of the grid, which resulted in high technical losses, explain the decrease of grid-tied capacity from 2,620 to 1,944 MW in 2019. An IPP gas turbine power plant as well as renewable wind farms and solar projects have been agreed upon but did not materialize yet (Ministry of Energy and Water, 2019). Political bickering over policy choices have prevented the multiple plans from producing the expected effects (Ayat et al., 2021;[START_REF] Hasbani | Electricity Sector Reform in Lebanon: Political Consensus in Waiting[END_REF][START_REF] Moore | Decentralised Renewable Energy and Prosperity for Lebanon[END_REF][START_REF] Verdeil | Infrastructure Crises in Beirut and the Struggle to (not) Reform the Lebanese State[END_REF]. Only temporary and expensive solutions were implemented, such as the renting of barges run by a Turkish company with a 370 MW capacity [START_REF] Bouri | The Lebanese Electricity Woes: An Estimation of the Economical Costs of Power Interruptions[END_REF]. Designed for a few years, they were in operation until the termination of the contract in 2021, while the projects that were supposed to replace them have failed to materialize. Power cuts have become the new normal, and citizens and companies have developed responses to cope with them.

The Use of Diesel Generators and the Political Stakes of its Regulation

Diesel generators (DG) are the main component of these solutions. Anchored in the practice of more than 30 years, they were estimated to supply about 84 percent of the Lebanese households in 2018, up from 61.5 percent in 2007 (CAS, 2008;2020). First developed during the 1980s, they were at the time individual backup systems, sometimes extended to ones neighbors as a solidarity practice (Awada, 1988). However, over the years, they gradually became more complex and were integrated into collective practices. The sharing of cost, predominant at the level of buildings, went along with commercial practices that developed in the neighborhood or at the municipal scale, with mini-grids in use when the national utility cut its supply. Today they structure the daily life of Lebanese users, representing a backup but also a strong constraint on the organization of time with heavy financial and sanitary cost (Abi Ghanem, 2017;[START_REF] Verdeil | Beirut, Metropolis of Darkness and the Politics of Urban Electricity Grids[END_REF]. They also represent a sizable economic sector, estimated to provide 13,200 jobs and generating a revenue of 1.1 billion US$ for the commercial DG sector and 1,974 billion US$ for the imports and distribution of fuel as well as sale, distribution, and maintenance of the DG (Ahmad, 2020a). Estimations of generation from DGs amount to 8.1 TWh in 2018, representing 37 percent of the total electricity consumed in the country, up from 4.2 TWh in 2006.

However, the commercial DG sector is only the most visible part. The non-commercial (non-subscription based) self-generation indeed represented 4 TWh, i.e., 49 percent of the diesel-generation market in 2018. Most of its users are industries, big commercial companies as well as public or non-profit entities (army, education, hospitals, administration). According to Ahmad "some industrial users rely completely on DGs, even when EDL power is available, to avoid the risk of sudden power loss, which can be very costly" (Ahmad, 2020a: 69). In 2006, high voltage subscribers (mostly big firms) using their own DGs generated 67 percent of their electricity, estimated to 3.5 TWh (World Bank, 2008). This figure represented 83 percent of the self-generation sector. The increase of power cuts, pushing households and small companies to rely more on generators, explains the relative drop of industrial and commercial self-generation share.

Beyond individual and entrepreneurial strategies, public authorities' policies towards DGs represent an often-overlooked factor to account for their growth. The policy history we provide here relies on a synthesis of existing works, press analysis and interviews with policy officials. This policy shifted over the years from an ashamed and silent tolerance to an ambiguous recognition and policing. During the 1990s and until the middle of the 2000s, as public capacity increased and power cuts strongly decreased, generators were tolerated as a temporary and backward solution, soon to be replaced by conventional supply managed by EDL. In 2005, our first interviews on the subject showed that EDL and foreign consulting engineers were aware that big companies relied only on generators, but they considered it as foolish, economically unsustainable, and something that would soon disappear. 1 However, as unlawful as they were, local public authorities, namely the municipalities, responsible for security issues, governed them. Mayors ruled the location of generators in order to mitigate noise and fumes as well as monitor the use of publicly owned poles and streetlamps by generator wires. In some cases they even caped the price of generators' subscriptions and divided the area of service between different service providers [START_REF] Gabillet | Le commerce des abonnements aux générateurs électriques au Liban[END_REF]. As the commerce of generators' subscription rose, complaints against the owners' commercial practices also grew. The word mafia became widespread to describe their behavior as they overpriced when local monopoly arose, undersupplied, or even used violent practices against discontents and potential competitors [START_REF] Mohsen | Lebanon's Electricity Mafia Al Akhbar English[END_REF][START_REF] Olj | Khawli appelle l'Etat à réagir face aux « mafias des générateurs privés[END_REF][START_REF] Verdeil | Beirut, Metropolis of Darkness and the Politics of Urban Electricity Grids[END_REF].

Ministers Tabourian, Bassil, and Abi Khalil, who managed electricity from 2008 to 2018, devised a two-track policy for generators. On the one side, they singled out the practices of the market's biggest players. They used the word mafia mostly to stigmatize the companies importing fuel for the generators' market because of the huge profits they made. They considered these players, connected to strong political actors who sat in the government, as having vested interests. Because the development of centralized generation power plants supplying the grid would reduce the size of their market, they opposed the policy the Energy Ministers pushed. For instance, César Abi Khalil, then the Energy Minister's main advisor, cited the name of the head of the syndicate of fuel importers, who was also the treasurer of the Progressive Socialist Party (Personal Interview, 2012a). Other importers had political clout as well, as several press reports established. In addition, studies and press reports pointed out the unusually large numbers of companies when compared to other countries, which suggests the existence of a cartel to keep prices high (Ahmad, 2020a: 35;Ayoub, 2020;The Cradle's Lebanon correspondent, 2021). However, given their political strength, the ministers could not confront them directly, and they had to use an indirect strategy through the regulation of the small market's players.

On the other side, they indeed considered small local generators' owners as providing a welcomed service, but in need for regulation. The Water and Energy ministers started publishing a monthly reference tariff for private generators in October 2010, based on the fixed and variable costs of operating generators (OLJ, 2010) and monitored by the Ministry of Economy and Commerce. Both ministers then decided that generators' owners had to install meters to charge subscribers only for the electricity actually consumed (Hage [START_REF] Boutros | Générateurs : Khoury impose l'installation de compteurs avant fin septembre L'Orient-Le Jour[END_REF][START_REF] Boutros | Générateurs privés : le gouvernement entend se faire respecter L'Orient-Le Jour[END_REF]. All this without legalizing the sale of electricity, which remained illegal and hence not subjected to VAT and other taxes. According to a senior advisor to the Energy Minister, this set of measures intended to reduce the profit margins of the generator's owners and above all, the fuel importers (Informal Discussion, 2018).

Strikingly, this policy for the subscription-based generators' sector left the self-generation practices of the manufacturing and commercial sectors untouched, despite the wide share of the market they represented. Self-generation indeed is legal. Industrialists and the managers of big firms suffered great losses from power cuts and high energy costs (World Bank, 2008: 20). Since the end of the 2000s, they increasingly criticized the Ministry of Energy's (lack of) reforms and offered their take, which among other suggestions included a stronger reliance on the generators capacity their firms owned. These ideas were highlighted during interviews conducted with Alain Tabourian, manager of a big manufacture of beverages (which, to avoid the fluctuations of the public grid, used the power it self-generated), and with Neemat Frem, the owner of a commercial and industrial holding and then head of the Lebanese Industrialists Association (Personal Interview 2012b, 2012c). Both were politically close to the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), whose strong man Gebran Bassil was the Water and Energy Minister from 2010 to 2014. Alain Tabourian himself served as the Minister of Water and Energy between 2008 and 2009. He was representing the Tashnag Party, an ally of the FPM. Frem was a member of Parliament and belonged to the group led by the FPM. At the time, the government wanted to increase the capacity by building new power plants and meanwhile discussed the renting of the power barges from the Turkish company Karadeniz. Both Tabourian and Frem suggested that instead the government could have encouraged industrialists to invest in new generators to generate and feed electricity to the grid. They saw this as a way to foster the development of the industrial sector through soft loans, for instance. Interestingly, a World Bank report already called for the government to clarify the legal status of "large self-generators" and to temporarily allow that "they … provide standby back-up capacity to the EDL system and sell electricity to EDL during certain periods" (World Bank, 2008: 21). These facts illustrate that interest for electric decentralization is not a marginal issue but a central one in the political economy. Beyond small scale practices and so-called mafias, essential economic and political actors had a stake in it. However, Bassil and his main advisor and future minister, Abi Khalil (2016-2019), disagreed with this option. They preferred to keep direct control over the sector through public procurement of new power plants. Their policy, however, did not marginalize DGs, which de facto have kept their central role in the energy system. As the electricity crisis deepened ideas to foster big consumers to generate their own energy, thanks to subsidies targeting the industrialists, came back in 2018-19, but were not implemented.

The Rise of PV and Hybrid Systems: Foreign-Funded and Market-Led Policy Tools

The other way to develop distributed electricity systems involves solar generation. The renewable energies in Lebanon are anchored in a complex governance system in which public bodies designed policies in close partnership with the banking sector and international players. 2 At the Copenhagen Conference in 2009, the Lebanese Government committed to increase its share of renewable energies in the energy mix up to 12 percent by 2020. 3 International and non-governmental organizations (World Bank, European Union, United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], and USAID) have pushed the Ministry of Energy and Water toward a greater decentralization of electricity delivery and have opened the path to renewable energies in Lebanon. As early as 2002, the UNDP launched several renewable projects, including the creation of the Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation Project (LCECP), then the Country Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Demonstration Project for the Recovery of Lebanon (CEDRO) in 2007 and the Small Decentralized Renewable Energy Power Generation Project (DREG) in 2014. Through grants and tenders, CEDRO and DREG were tasked to develop pilot projects for distributed renewable energy systems throughout the country. CEDRO is one of the main players in the decentralization of energy systems with investments amounting to more than US $ 41.4 million (Personal Interview, 2020).

In 2011 the LCECP became an institution affiliated with the MoEW and its main technical advisor, and shortly afterwards was renamed the LCEC. Initially funded by the Global Environment Facility, the LCEC also benefited from donations from the European Union, as well as from the Central Bank of Lebanon and the Lebanese government. In the absence of a national energy agency and independent regulatory authority, the LCEC filled a gap as a technical advisor for local and national actors, project manager or public policy designer for renewable energies and energy efficiency, in close partnership with international organizations and the Central Bank of Lebanon.

The banks also held a fundamental role until the financial collapse of 2019-20. The European Union and the Lebanese Government funded the National Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Action (NEEREA), a financing mechanism offering credit at a very low interest rate. The Central Bank of Lebanon managed it, while commercial banks distributed the loans to investors. Until 2019, total investments in photovoltaic (PV) decentralized projects amounted to about 125 million US$, with 2,172 projects, 80 percent of them in the private sector. Fifty-nine companies were active on the market, with a total of 653 jobs [START_REF] Jabbour | The 2019 Solar PV Status Report for Lebanon[END_REF].

As a result of this set of policies, a wide variety of electrical systems emerged either ongrid or off-grid, legal or illegal, with generators or not, with batteries or not (see Table 1). Given that renewable energies and the grid in Lebanon are both intermittent, renewable systems require an additional source. Therefore, CEDRO designed a hybrid system with DGs and photovoltaic panels, which is crafted to cope with Lebanese peculiarities. This PV system operated on-grid when conventional energy is available and off-grid in fuel reduction mode during load shedding (See Table 2).

The LCEC 2019 survey provides a comprehensive picture of the market of decentralized solar PV systems. It experienced a strong growth between 2010 and 2019, with a capacity currently reaching about 78 MWp for 2160 installed projects. Fifty-four percent have been financed by NEERA, which shows the effectiveness of public support. The most active sectors are the industry, which accounts for 33 percent of the capacity, the commercial sector (22 percent), agriculture (13 percent) and the residential sector (13 percent). The remaining 21 percent are other tertiary customers (medical, education, public service, non-profit). Altogether, the sectors that run the biggest systems are the most capital intensive, with industry the first (on average 213 KWp), then hospitals (138 KWp), and finally, the commercial sector (50 KWp). Residential customers only stand at 9 KWp. They are mostly concentrated in the central Beqaa (Zahle district 21 percent), the districts of Byblos (9.7 percent), Metn (5.2 percent) and Kesrwan (5.1 percent) which constitute the northern part of Mount Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut and the district of Saida (7.8 percent) (see Figure 1). These are the economically most advanced regions of the country, with the biggest companies.

The distribution of systems by type shows the overwhelming domination of on-grid systems (58 percent). It is easy to understand in the area of Zahleh which enjoyed at the time of the survey 24/7 service thanks to the special arrangement with the private concessionary company EDZ (Ahmad et al., 2020;[START_REF] Verdeil | Securitisation of Urban Electricity Supply. A Political Ecology Perspective on the Cases of Jordan and Lebanon[END_REF] and where grid-tied systems represent 90 percent of the total. 4 Other types of systems (off-grid, hybrid) constitute a good share of the total in other areas, but grid-tied dominates almost everywhere (53 percent on average). This is paradoxical and can only be explained by the fact that those systems are incorporating back-up generators for when the grid is off. Beyond the existence of a rising number of so-called hybrid systems, now representing 13 percent of the installed capacity, most systems include generators and, increasingly, batteries (20 percent).

The emergence of decentralized solar systems in Lebanon increased the technological complexity in the landscape and highlights a process of hybridization. It did not dislodge the dominance of gensets as the preferred alternative but rather articulated with it, with variations according to sectors and regions. This observation is coherent with the worldwide development of gensets, not only in countries plagued by electricity crisis but even in economies where grids work well (Arik, 2019).

Sociologically, the emergence of this new landscape relied on a set of actors and institutions very different from those involved in the diesel-based generation and distribution. They comprise international aid institutions, local experts advocating for renewable energy against fossil-fueled technology in the ministry, banks, and local installers. The economic weight of this sector remains far below that of the generators, with a

Resisting Hybridization: The Hurdles Facing Net-Metering Implementation

Adopted in 2011 by EDL's board of directors under the influence of the UNDP and the LCEC, net metering policy is an interesting illustration of hybridization, and the hurdles it faces. Net metering is a technical and legal mechanism which allows for the exchange of electricity from a small decentralized renewable system to the conventional grid through a bidirectional meter. Although net metering was adopted as a national policy, the difference in its implementation between the national utility EDL and the private company Electricité de Zahle (EDZ) in its concession area raises questions about the interests of the grid's operators to support the decentralization of electricity.

In 2019, EDL accepted 135 net metering projects, a figure that can be compared to about more than 700 grid-tied systems in EDL-managed areas, even if not all may have applied (own calculation, LCEC 2019 database). By contrast, the number of net metering projects in the concession of Zahle reached 622 projects in June 2021 for a total capacity of 8MW [START_REF] Ayoub | The Economics and Politics of Integrating Renewables into Electricity Concessions in Lebanon[END_REF].

Several reasons explain this discrepancy. With a 24-hour electricity supply, the Zahle area has an exceptional status in the Lebanese electrical landscape. Electricité de Zahle (EDZ) has been operating since 1923 in 16 municipalities and for 70,000 customers under a concession status, and has been distributing EDL power since the 1970s. In 2015 the private operator started its own diesel generation to overcome EDL outages, based on 66 rented generators for a total capacity of 60 MW (Ahmad et al., 2022;[START_REF] Verdeil | Securitisation of Urban Electricity Supply. A Political Ecology Perspective on the Cases of Jordan and Lebanon[END_REF]. Thanks to this reliable supply of electricity, the net metering mechanism works particularly well in the concession because the grid can be used as a storage system and there is no need for additional systems (batteries or DGs). With an on-grid system with net metering, the bill is reduced by 30 percent up to 100 percent, meaning the total cancellation of the bill. 5 Until 2019 EDZ was very involved in the development of net metering with a department dedicated to renewable energies. But since then, EDZ established a set of limits to preserve the company's economic model: a maximum of 30 percent of photovoltaic capacity can be exported to the grid for capacity greater than 100 kW. 6 Indeed, renewable self-production is a tool to smooth demand pics and, therefore, to limit a company's need to increase diesel production. However, the increase of self-consumption constitutes a significant risk of loss of income for EDZ because the consumption of equipped subscribers drops. EDZ employees cited the risk of overload and instability on EDZ's because of the injection of renewable energies as a reason for the move. However, the preservation of its economic interest remains a major factor.

Similar issues of economic balance between the interests of the prosumer and those of the grid operator emerge inside the national utility EDL. Integrating PV energy on the grid could be beneficial to EDL by reducing technical and non-technical losses and curbing the energy demand for the utility company. This could happen only if a set of interrelated conditions are met regarding the rate of solar energy exported into the grid, the cost of electricity production by EDL, conventional tariffs (currently highly subsidized) and transmission grid improvement (Ahmad, 2020b). Implementing such a win-win strategy is not easy, but could be achieved if the stakeholders cooperate.

Beyond these economic and political factors explaining EDL's unwillingness to support the net metering policy, the deteriorated condition of the monopoly prevents its successful implementation. Indeed, several visits and interviews carried out in areas served by EDL show that investors in decentralized renewable electricity systems had to wait for up to three years before EDL installed the net metering system. Meanwhile, the PV electricity generated was fed back into the grid for free. Interviewees cited organizational shortcomings inside the utility that affect the operation of net metering, such as the absence of a department dedicated to renewable energies and the two years-delay in the billing process (bill collection and distribution). Furthermore, currently the EDL transmission grid is in poor condition and can only receive a limited renewable load.

Nevertheless, given the potential interest of net metering policy, several analysts and actors in the sector interpret the blockage in its implementation as resulting from the deliberate will to preserve the current functioning and to protect the interests of incumbent stakeholders. 7 Thus, if the deployment of hybrid diesel/PV systems with net metering is much more proactive within the perimeter of the Zahle concession, both examples show that the partial failure of net metering implementation is not only due to technical and organizational reasons but also due to the strategies incumbent actors implement to resist the way hybridization challenges their economic interests.

Lebanon's Multiple Crises: Contradictory Effects on the Dynamics of Electric Hybridization

Since 2019, Lebanon has entered turbulent times. The State defaulted on the public debt, with systemic consequences on the financial system, the society, and the infrastructure: the Lebanese lira has lost up to 95 percent of its value; the banking system is on the verge of collapsing and has frozen the accounts in foreign currency of the population; and more than 80 percent of the population is under the poverty line. In the face of this crisis, the Central Bank initially set up a subsidy scheme to support the import of essential resources vital for society and the economy, including fuel for the power plants and for the private generators. However, to limit the rhythm of the foreign currency reserves' depletion, the Central Bank imposed quotas for the imports of fuel, which increased the length of power cuts to unprecedented levels, with an average supply of 2-3 hours a day, and even total blackout for two days in October 2021. Meanwhile, DGs also suffered import restrictions, which led to shortages and cuts in their supply. All aspects of social and economic life have been affected, from water supply to hospitals, including the food supply chain and the Internet [START_REF] Verdeil | Le sens de l'événement. Effondrement infrastructurel et interdépendance des réseaux : leçons du Liban en temps de blackout[END_REF]. Since the spring 2021, the Central Bank has lifted the subsidies, which pushed tariffs up strongly, rendering them now unaffordable for large parts of the population. This crisis of fuel import, which also affected the import of gasoline, highlighted anew the power of the actors involved in the import and distribution of diesel. During the summer of 2021, they successfully implemented several blockades to push the government to increase prices in order to maintain their profits. Several press reports and analyses unraveled these tactics, grounded in the combined domination of the import facilities and distribution infrastructure (13 companies control 68 percent of fuel tank fleet in the country) [START_REF] Ayoub | The Economics and Politics of Integrating Renewables into Electricity Concessions in Lebanon[END_REF]. However, in the face of unaffordable bills, many customers have had to adapt and reduce their consumption (Abdallah, 2021), which in the long term will affect the income of this sector. The crisis, therefore, exposed at the same time the strong political power of the actors of the generators market but also their vulnerabilities.

The financial crisis also put an end to the NEERA program that supported the solarbased decentralized electricity systems. However, the dramatic reduction of public supply led many companies and households to invest in such systems in order to secure their electricity supply. Despite the removal of the subsidy, the market kept on growing tremendously, with an addition of 11,2 MWp in 2020 (+14 percent), 100 MWp in 2021 (+100 percent) and expectedly 250 MWp in 2022 (El [START_REF] Khoury | Expecting 250 MW of solar rooftop installations during 2022 in Lebanon[END_REF].

On the policy level, the political paralysis continued, fostered by two government resignations and lengthy consultations to nominate new ones, only to be stalled again by internal strife. Tariff reform, aimed to curb subsidies and the spiraling of debt caused by the deficit of EDL, was supposed to happen in 2019 after a seemingly political consensus about it agreed upon. It has been postponed. Private investment in new power generation capacity is also on hold, even the agreed and awarded projects of wind power plants launched just before the crisis. International aid promised in the framework of the 2018 CEDRE program was conditioned on radical political reforms, including major changes in the governance of the electricity sector (tariff increase, procurement reform, creation of an independent regulator).

Nevertheless, debates and proposals for reform have never been so loud and present in the public sphere, underscoring the diversity of visions and interest for the future of the sector. We analyzed a representative selection of those publicly available visions in light of their position vis-à-vis the decentralization of energy generation and distribution (see Table 3). Beyond the socio-technical assemblage, this points to new articulations of political interests, as shown when one takes into consideration the sociology of their actors.

The bloom of visions and roadmaps for reforming the electricity sector rests on the mobilization of categories of actors who have remained marginal to the field until recently. They comprise academic experts involved in local think tanks, such as the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) for Policies at the American University of Beirut; different groups of entrepreneurs from the renewable electricity sector, already striving due to the market of decentralized solar equipment installation; and experts with a more financial background, linked to various segments of the Lebanese private business milieu, including the banking sector. Noteworthily international aid agencies such as the World Bank, the UNDP or the German Konrad-Adenauer Foundation funded several of these plans. Their authors somehow compete for the attention of the foreign lenders who conditioned their funding for the electricity sector on the implementation of reforms.

Almost all projects clearly endorsed long-awaited changes such as the creation of an independent Energy Regulation Agency (ERA), the corporatization of the national utility, and the necessity to increase centralized electricity generation with a combination of gas fired power plants and solar and wind centralized farms. However, they vary regarding the degree of decentralization of electricity generation, the technologies that might be involved, the commercial mechanisms of distribution as well as the funding of those new capacities. All plans support the development of renewable electricity generation and net metering. However, some proposals, such as Ali Ahmad's report and the Future Energy Leaders, support a strong share of distributed electricity generation and emphasize the role private owners of diesel-based based generation can play in this move, which implies recognizing their business and accepting the use of diesel for a few transition years. Both also favor municipal generation with a similar mix of technologies. In both plans, the national utility would remain the single buyer. In contrast to this, other proposals think of decentralized electricity generation through renewable only. Several reports advocate peer-to-peer energy trading and electricity wheeling. There is also a divergence between the plans that support the monopoly of the public utility as a single buyer and distributor, and others that support decentralization through private distribution companies (DISCO) or municipalities, even with the possibility of local autarky, which comes in line with projects of political decentralization, as advocated by some political parties such as the Kataeb Party. It is to be noted, however, that the owners of (former) concessions, in Zahle or Jbeil, also promoted such schemes of territorial electricity autonomy, based on license for local generation (with thermal technology) and distribution, in the recent past, aside from the projects of political decentralization [START_REF] Verdeil | Securitisation of Urban Electricity Supply. A Political Ecology Perspective on the Cases of Jordan and Lebanon[END_REF].

Discussion

Politics Shaping Hybridization Rather than seeing only the actions of non-state actors, it is, however, essential to stress that public authorities played a role at several levels: by tolerating and implicitly governing those initiatives, both nationally and locally, and by not regulating the importers' cartel practices, several of which were connected to leading political parties (Abdallah, 2021). Despite this dominant form of a decentralized electricity system, several actors moved to streamline renewable energy systems, by promoting the technologies and adapting them to the intermittent character of the grid, by elaborating a legal framework and enabling its funding. This group of actors has nevertheless diverse social and political interests, from engineers and entrepreneurs pushing ecological solutions to international organizations seeing in sustainable technologies a way to reform the electricity sector, and to banks finding in foreign and soft loans a new safe and profitable market. However, in this model, the monopoly of the national utility was never contested and the LCEC conversely always hoped EDL would adopt and adapt to these new technologies. This, however, never really happened and the public company resisted this decentralization, whatever the reasons: lack of human resources, fear of suffering unbearable financial consequences, or hidden pressures of vested interests attached to the status quo and the profits attached to it.

The 2019-20 crisis strongly destabilized the existing balance of power. While the collapse of the national utility has exposed the enduring political power of diesel-importers and diesel-generators, it has at the same time underlined their inability to provide full energy security, specifically at an affordable cost. The system supporting the development of decentralized renewable systems collapsed as well. However, even if at higher cost, decentralized renewable systems have thrived throughout the crisis. New stakeholders are trying to push for a radical reshuffling of the Lebanese electricity sector that would provide more sustainable supply in the future. They offer various visions and represent different interests competing for political and financial resources, particularly those offered by foreign agencies. However, their potential alliances with stakeholders belonging to the former assemblages of interests still remain unclear. Also, the degree of decentralization of the future system and its regulation still remains undecided, between a single-buyer model and a more liberalized market allowing dealing and peer-to-peer exchange as well as authorizing decentralized generation and distribution of privatized utilities.

Well beyond a planned transition, the Lebanese situation represents a case of hybridization of the electric sector, with an unstable landscape that shows contradictory trends. However, the situation cannot be described as an assemblage of "continually assembling, disassembling and re-assembling" actors and socio-technical solutions" [START_REF] Kumar | Solar Energy For All? Understanding the Successes and Shortfalls Through A Critical Comparative Assessment of Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and South Africa[END_REF]. It rather exhibits the strength of capitalistic interests taking advantage of the loopholes and failures of public policies. The private sector, both as investors in diesel generation or solar and hybrid systems, as well as the resellers and installers of these systems, is a major driver of change. The transformation toward the addition of renewable is more advanced for the big consumers (private or public) than for ordinary residential users. DGs will long remain a major electricity source. Such an unplanned and uncontrolled landscape, even if it allowed the country to survive and even at times develop without a well performing electricity system, resulted in many bad externalities, in terms of cost, environmental pollution, as well as illegal practices detrimental to the public budget and to transparency. Another consequence needs to be emphasized: growing social and territorial inequalities.

The Political Outcome of Continued Electric Hybridization: Social and Territorial Justice On-and Off-Grid Lebanon's electricity sector constitutes a clear illustration of the failure of the modern infrastructural ideal, in particular the ideal of social and territorial cohesion [START_REF] Coutard | Placing Splintering Urbanism: Introduction[END_REF]. The World Bank warned long ago that social inclusivity through progressive tariff of EDL was not ensured, due to the weight of the fixed part of the electricity bill (World Bank, 2009). In addition, geographic inequalities of load shedding resulted in bigger amounts of subsidy per capital for the regions enjoying the better coverage, which happen to be Beirut, its suburbs, already among those economically thriving in the country [START_REF] Verdeil | Electricity Subsidies: Benefiting Some Regions More Than Others LCPS[END_REF]. The sustained development of hybridization explains the constant reinforcing of social and territorial inequalities. For instance, the strong cost of unsubsidized generator subscriptions is more strongly felt in the underserved regions and also has socially regressive effects for the most disadvantaged part of the population (World Bank, 2009). The increase of power cuts and of diesel prices aggravated the situation.

The trend towards decentralized renewable systems is reinforcing the social and territorial polarization, marginalizing the North of the country and other remote and disadvantaged areas (See Figure 1). Upfront investment costs, despite the fall of PV and batteries, render hybrid systems out of reach for most ordinary citizens and even for many small firms and communities, which struggle with inflation affecting all sectors of everyday life. In 2019, 1 kWp of PV cost 935 US dollars based on the exchange rate of 1,500 LBP/$ dollars [START_REF] Jabbour | The 2019 Solar PV Status Report for Lebanon[END_REF], and much more when one accounts for devaluation. Recent surveys highlighted this cost constraint [START_REF] Ayoub | The Economics and Politics of Integrating Renewables into Electricity Concessions in Lebanon[END_REF].

International experiences in countries exhibiting features similar to Lebanon show that in addition to cost and tariff, the rise of decentralized generation also challenges tariff equalization, a tool for social and territorial inclusivity public utilities usually ensure. In Pakistan, the chronic power cuts since the 1990s pushed exporting industries to develop self-generation (based on natural gas rather than on diesel). Initially the government supported these investments, which alleviated the need for reinforcing the grid and new centralized generation units. It created mechanisms for reselling electricity. However, this move had politically heavy consequences: not only were the state utilities loosing revenues from key customers, but "historically cross-subsidized agriculture and small-domestic consumer's electricity needs" were under threat of tariff hikes potentially spurring protest and this policy was gradually reversed between 2002and 2008" (Anwar, 2015: 139): 139). The rise of PV systems in South Africa represents a similar threat to municipal-led redistribution practices through infrastructure [START_REF] Jaglin | Urban Electric Hybridizations: Exploring the Politics of a Just Transition in the Western Cape (South Africa)[END_REF]. In Jordan, solar self-generation pushed big customers to disconnect from the national grid [START_REF] Obeid | The Cost of Simplistic Power Purchase[END_REF]. In Lebanon, high and middle voltage customers, as well as higher bracket residential customers also cross-subsidize small customers. The government's planned tariff hike aimed to minimize the effect for low-consumption subscribers. The fairness of this measure was conditioned on the decrease of bills from generators. Under continued hybridization and the perspective of big customers gradually moving out of the grid, the possibility of funding subsidies for low-subscription customers from the utility's revenues seems uncertain, even more when one accounts for the drastic devaluation that affects the disappearing middle class [START_REF] Nucho | Post-Grid Imaginaries: Electricity, Generators, and the Future of Energy[END_REF].

Conclusion

The Lebanese case helped unpack the relations between politics and hybridization of the electric system, which results in the uncontrolled addition of decentralized technologies with potentially destabilizing effects on electricity configurations. It showed that political groups and interests shape the trajectory of the electricity sector by undermining the policy reforms and defending or advancing their own agendas and socio-technical solutions. Contradictory and conflictual policy processes combine with energy-security and profit-driven attitudes by private actors, resulting in wide-scale changes in the energy landscape. The continued process of hybridization increases the social and territorial polarization while weakening the instruments of solidarity in favor of disadvantaged groups, thus heightening political tensions. The article also showed that moments of strong political crisis may destabilize the existing interests and open the door for changes, which represents an opportunity to move towards a more sustainable and fair energy configuration. The political and socio-technical complexity will most probably remain the defining feature of the energy landscape and policymakers have to take it into account as well as the messiness that comes with it, rather than assuming a swift move to sustainable solutions. This lesson presumably also applies to the situations of neighboring countries such as Syria, Yemen, the Palestinian Territories, and Iraq (Ahmad, 2020b;[START_REF] Fischhendler | Light at the End of the Panel: The Gaza Strip and the Interplay between Geopolitical Conflict and Renewable Energy Transition[END_REF][START_REF] Harajli | Commercial-Scale Hybrid Solar Photovoltaic -Diesel Systems in Select Arab Countries With Weak Grids: An Integrated Appraisal[END_REF], but also other countries enduring public utilities crises, or tensions, and uncontrolled diversifying of energy technologies such as Pakistan, Nigeria, South Africa or Jamaica (Anwar, 2015;[START_REF] Jaglin | Urban Electric Hybridizations: Exploring the Politics of a Just Transition in the Western Cape (South Africa)[END_REF][START_REF] Pilo | Infrastructural Heterogeneity: Energy Transition, Power Relations, and Solidarity in Kingston, Jamaica[END_REF][START_REF] Rateau | Co-Production of Access and Hybridisation of Configurations: A Socio-Technical Approach to Urban Electricity in Cotonou and Ibadan[END_REF]

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Map of PV systems in Lebanon in 2018 market of about 125 million US$ in the last 10 years to be compared to US$2 billion per year (Ahmad, 2020a: 9).

Table 1 :

 1 Type of solar projects and Grid interaction in Lebanon in 2019

		Capacity	Capacity
	Project type	(MWp)	(%)	Definition	Gensets Status
	Hybrid/Multisource	9.93	13	This refers to systems that involve the	Included
				parallel operation of PV with one or more
				"grid-forming" sources (e.g. PV-Diesel)
				without any actual connection to the EDL
				grid.
	Off-grid with	1.12	1	Same as off-grid, but the battery bank can	Included
	generator back-up			be recharged by another generator (e.g.
				Diesel back-up genset).
	Off-Grid/Stand-alone/	3.76	5	These systems are standalone, working	No (possibly present
	Autonomous			independently from a grid. Batteries are	as back-up)
				an integral part of this configuration. PV
				will feed the local loads and charge the
				batteries thereby ensuring a fully
				autonomous operation.
	On-grid with batteries/	5.39	7	These systems combine the features of the	No (possibly present
	grid interactive/			on-grid and off-grid systems as they	as back-up)
	dual-mode			operate like the former whenever the grid
				is present and switch to the operation of
				the latter should the utility's availability
				become compromised.
	On-grid/Grid-tied/	45.74	58	These systems require connection to the	In practice, gensets
	Online			grid in order to operate. For decentralized	are most of the
				systems, in the case where PV production	time included.
				is greater than the local demand load, the
				surplus is injected into the grid via net-
				metering. In times of blackouts, the PV
				system usually operates in parallel with
				back-up generators (most commonly
				diesel gensets).
	PV Pumping/Solar	12.71	16	These systems consist of a direct connection	No (possibly present
	Pumping			to a DC pump or through an inverter to	as back-up)
				feed an AC pump, instantly providing all
				the available power collected by the PV
				modules directly to the load. The system
				can be upgraded to include batteries.

Source

[START_REF] Jabbour | The 2019 Solar PV Status Report for Lebanon[END_REF] (2019 PV Status Report)

Table 2 :

 2 Solar projects by sectors and grid interaction (KWp)

		On-
		grid/	On-grid with		Off-grid		PV
		Grid-	batteries/grid		with	Off-Grid/	Pumping/
		tied/	interactive/	Hybrid/	generator	Stand-alone/	Solar
	Sectors	Online	dual-mode	Multisource	back-up	Autonomous	Pumping	Total	%
	Industrial	13996	348	3563	371	70	30	18378	33%
	Commercial	8939	1631	784	145	774	20	12293	22%
	Residential	4288	2019	1311	390	1240	22	9270	16%
	Agricultural	261	161	76	13	121	4399	5030	9%
	Public	2684	540	593	25	773	368	4983	9%
	Educational	2119	299	172	30	12	60	2692	5%
	Medical	2043		167				2210	4%
	Non-profit	846	76	173	9	252	154	1509	3%
	Total	35175	5074	6838	983	3242	5053	56365 100%
	Source : LCEC database for the year 2018

Table 3 :

 3 Review of recently published plans for reforming the Lebanese sector and promoting electricity decentralization Source : Authors' compilation(press, online report, interviews)

					Energy mix -Role of renewable	Degree of hybridization and sociotechnical
	Scenarios	Network of actors	Instruments	Funding	energies	model
	"Distributed Renewable	UNDP, ERBD and Academic	Renewable electricity exchange	Private sector: small scale	Promotion of renewable energies at	Public management of the sector with
	Energy Law" currently	Cristina Abi Haidar: Donors & market between individual private suppliers and prosumers	the individual scale and for small-	centralized power plants (1) and the
	being drafted	Partnership with the Ministry	players through the conventional		scale projects	integration of small-scale distributed
		of Energy and Water (MEW)	grid: P2P + net metering + RE			renewable projects in the national grid
		and the LCEC	equipment leasing			(2) → Centralized regulation/ no local
						autonomy
	"An alternative emergency "Future Energy Leaders":	Feed-in tariff and licensing policy Launch of the project by the	High penetration of distributed	Articulation between distributed hybrid
	plan for Lebanon:	engineers from the Lebanese	for hybrid PV-diesel mini-grids	EBRD, the WB and the Hariri	renewable generation at the	PV/Diesel mini-grids owned by private
	integrating diesel and PV	private sector (RE suppliers),	connected to MV substations of	foundation, and then	municipal/neighborhood scale: 4	investors or municipalities (1) and
	systems in virtual power	organization initiated by the	the national distribution grid	investment by private actors	GW of decentralized solar PV in 2025 thermal centralized production on the
	plant operations for EDL",	World Energy Council and		and municipalities (high	i.e. the removal of 80% of existing	national grid (2) → Partial
	February 2021	hosted by the MEW and the		profitability)	neighborhood diesel generators	decentralization and privatization of
		LCEC				electricity production and distribution,
						within a nationally regulated framework
	"Distributed Power	Ali Ahmad: Academic, World	Market mechanisms and licensing Lucrative investment for private High penetration of distributed	Articulation between distributed hybrid
	Generation for Lebanon:	Bank consultant	policy to upscale and integrate	actors and municipalities in	renewable generation on a	PV/Diesel mini-grids (1), the centralized
	Market Assessment and		decentralized solar PV systems to	renewables	municipal/neighborhood scale:	national grid (2) and small-scale
	Policy Pathways", May		existing distributed diesel		partial replacement of existing	distributed renewable systems (3) →
	2020		generator capacity (commercial or		decentralized diesel-based	Private and decentralized generation and
			municipal)		generators → hybrid local	distribution (local regulation), coexisting
					generation	with the national grid (national
						regulation)
	"Lebanon's Electricity Sector	LFRE, Strategy&, AUB: NGO	Public tenders for production	Funding by aid agencies (WB)	High penetration of large-scale	Articulation between utility-scale solar and
	-Leapfrogging to Higher	founded by business leaders,	licenses for large-scale solar	and large private investors	renewables (up to 47% by 2030 i.e.,	wind generation (1), distributed and
	Penetration of	bankers, lawyers, engineers.	farms on public land and medium-	(IFC)	6.1 GW of green energy out of a	collective renewable production (2) and
	Renewable", May 2019	Opposition to MEW and LCEC	scale farms on private land (local		total capacity of 10.5) and	natural gas power plants (3) →
		policies	suppliers such as schools)		development of distributed solar	Technical decentralization of energy
					PV on school roofs (450 MW)	systems within a nationally regulated
						framework
	"Unbundling Lebanon's	IFI (M. Ayoub, P. Rizkallah, C. Abi Holistic reform of the sector (ERA)	IMF and private investors	Increase of centralized production	Articulation between centralized natural
	Electricity Sector",	Haidar): academic experts.	and corporatization: up to 60% of		through PPP with natural gas and	gas production (1), centralized solar
	September 2021	Voiced opposition to MEW	production and 40% of		renewables	farms (2) and decentralized small-scale
		policies	distribution to private actors who			renewable energies (3) → Centralized
			hold shares in public companies			electricity sector with the participation
						of private actors under national
						regulation
						(Continued )

Table 3 :

 3 Continued. "Distributed Power Generation for Lebanon: Market Assessment and Policy Pathways": https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/33788/Distributed-Power-Generation-for-Lebanon-Market-Assessment-and-Policy-Pathways.pdf?sequence = 5&isAllowed = y Future Energy Leaders, "An alternative emergency plan for Lebanon: integrating diesel and PV systems in virtual power plant operations for EDL": https://issuu.com/theexclusive/docs/the_exclusive_-_lep Jessica Obeid: Obeid, Jessica. 2021. 'Mitigating the Darkest Hour: Lebanon's Struggle for Power'. Middle East Institute (blog). 21 July 2021. https://www.mei.edu/publications/mitigating-darkest-hour-lebanons-strugglepower. IFI, "Unbundling Lebanon's Electricity Sector" : https://www.aub.edu.lb/ifi/Documents/publications/research_reports/2020-2021/20211020_unbundling_lebanon_electricity_sector_research_paper_pdf.pdf Carol Ayat, "Bridging the banking crisis to crowdfund electricity reform in Lebanon" : https://www.aub.edu.lb/ifi/Documents/publications/research_reports/2020-2021/20211020_comprehensive_solution_to_the_ lebanese_electricity_sector_report_pdf.pdf

					Energy mix -Role of renewable	Degree of hybridization and sociotechnical
	Scenarios	Network of actors	Instruments	Funding	energies	model
	"Bridging the banking crisis Carol Ayat: Former Banking and Creation of private companies for Lebanese depositors invest their Baseload relies on natural gas-fired	Decentralized and private distribution
	to crowdfund electricity	financial expert, Lebanese Oil	production (GENCOs through BOT)	local dollars through a bank-	power plants (2.7 MW) and then	companies (local management) and
	reform in Lebanon",	and Gas Initiative, recently	and distribution (DISCOs through	intermediated	development of large-scale	private production fed into the national
	October 2021	affiliated to IFI / AUB & IMF	PPP), but the transmission remains	crowdfunding system	renewable energy projects (4.2 MW,	grid → Financialization,
		influence Voiced strong	with EDL		I.E 30% by 2030)	corporatization and privatization of
		opposition to MEW policies				the sector
	« Mitigating the darkest	Jessica Obeid: Independent	Holistic reform of the sector, increase Private investors (competitive Baseload relies mainly on thermal	Articulation between centralized
	hour: Lebanon's struggle	consultant, former employee	in generation through PPP and	procurement)	power plants but promotion of	production with 3 thermal power plants
	for power », July 2021	of the UNDP. Regularly voiced	increase in tariffs (to encourage		small-scale distributed renewables to	(1), one renewable station (2) and the
		critics of MEW policies	large consumers to switch to		curb energy demand for EDL	decentralized development of small-
			renewable energies)			scale renewable energies (3) →
						Conservation of the public sector but
						corporatization with private
						companies which sell electricity to EDL
	References
	Ali Ahmad,

  Table4synthetizes the results of the research. It distinguishes three distinct trends of energy decentralization that coexist and interplay one with the other and with the conventional grid. The first one, historically and quantitatively, is the widespread use of diesel-generators in Lebanese society. Private actors and inhabitants, individually or collectively, implemented temporary and makeshift solutions in search of energy security and profit, based on fossil-based technologies (DGs). This resulted in largely unexpected transformations, which now represent deeply embedded interests and material systems.

Table 4 :

 4 Actors and politics associated to electric hybridization processes Source : Authors

			Source of political power and kind of
	Hybridization process	Actors	politics
	Diesel generators as backup for grid's	Big company owners (industry /	Availability of capital => investment in
	failures	commerce / service buildings)	generators / lobbying for legalizing
			private decentralized generation and
			distribution
		Neighbourhoods' generators	Ability to enforce local monopoly
		owners and suppliers	(alliance with local powers)
		Diesel importers	Practices of cartel (alliance with national
			political players) to control prices and
			extract rent. Suspected practices of
			disrupting reforms of electricity to
			defend the cartel's monopoly over
			imports
	Solar-based technologies to generate	LCEC, official public agency	Streamlining technological models +
	electricity to complement the grid or	advising the govt	Elaborating legal framework +
	back up its failures		Networking funding organizations
		International money lenders +	Designing / supplying concessional
		Local banks + Central Bank	funding schemes
		Companies, organizations and	• Convincing banks + mobilizing
		wealthy customers investing	political network to access funding/
		in solar techs	aid
			• Adjusting connection and
			consumption practices to optimize
			profit
	Solar-based technologies as vehicle for	Think tanks	• Critical assessment of previous
	partial or almost total autonomy from	Policy experts and tech	malfunctioning electric system
	the grid and from diesel-based	entrepreneurs	(blaming and shaming)
	generators		• Elaboration of alternative legal and
			financial frameworks enabling
			decentralized generation and
			distribution
			• Advocacy in the press and towards
			foreign aid agency and foreign
			government

.

  Notes 1. Interviews, EDL, 2005. 2. Data collected while hosted at the LCEC from February to May 2019. 3. Since 2018, the target is to meet 30 percent of total primary energy consumption from renewables energies by 2030. 4. In this paragraph, the figures come from calculation on data from the 2018 LCEC database, which we were authorized to access. 5. Interview with two officials of EDZ, 03/19/2019 and 06/8/2021. 6. Interview with two officials of EDZ, 03/19/2019 and 06/8/2021. 7. A supplier of renewable systems told us: "Of course, I can find technical blocking to explain the problems of net metering to you. But if you dig deep the problem is never technical, but always political because there are interests in the non-functioning of the system especially with fuel," Beirut, 03/14/201.

and Social Science 86 (2022) 102399. N.H. Anwar, Infrastructure Redux: Crisis, Progress in Industrial Pakistan and Beyond (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). E. Arik, Le marché des groupes électrogènes dans les Suds, Research Report (Agence Française de Développement ; CERI Sc Po Paris, 2019) <https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02064136> Accessed December 18, 2020. F. Awada, La gestion des services urbains à Beyrouth pendant la guerre : 1975-1985, Pratiques urbaines (Talence), ISSN 0992-3845; 5 (Talence: CEGET, 1988). C. Ayat, L. Haytayan, J. Obeid, and M. Ayoub, Keeping the Lights on. A Short Term Action Plan for Lebanon's Electricity Sector (Beirut: AUB/IFI -Konrad Adenauer Stiftung -Natural Resource Governance Institute, 2021). M. Ayoub, Map of the Oil Monopolies in Lebanon: "The Strength of Cartels Comes From Their Unity" (in Arabic) Legal Agenda (2020) <http://www.legal-agenda.com/--اﺣﺗﻛﺎرات ﺧﺎرطﺔ -ا ّ◌ ةو -ق ل ب ﻧﺎن -ﻓﻲ- ّ◌ ن ف ط ا ل /> Accessed July 14, 2021. M. Ayoub, "Breaking Bad Power Management," Executive Summary, October 2021.

Funding

This research was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (project Hybridelec, grant no. ANR-17-CE05-0002.

Notes on contributors

Alix Chaplain is a PhD candidate at Sciences Po, Center for International Studies (CERI), CNRS, Paris, France.

Éric Verdeil is a professor at Sciences Po, Center for International Studies (CERI), CNRS, Paris, France.


PH.D François Beck

PH.D Stéphane Legleye
email: stephane.legleye@inserm.fr.

PH.D Patrick Peretti- Watel

Patrick Peretti-Watel

Alcohol and Tobacco Use After One Month of Containment Measures for the COVID-19 Sanitary Crisis in France

ABSTRACT. Objective:

The measures put in place to contain the coronavirus epidemic in France have led to fears of a massive increase in the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. Method: Taking advantage of an ongoing weekly Internet survey monitoring living conditions of the French population during the containment, we introduced questions on alcohol and tobacco use 1 month after the start of the first containment. Analyses were conducted with multivariate Poisson regressions. Results: Tobacco consumption remained almost unchanged.

By contrast, more than a third of French people did change their weekly alcohol intake: 13% increased it, whereas 21% decreased it, indicating that the containment measures were often taken as an opportunity to reduce alcohol consumption, especially among those who drank less than 4 days per week before. Men were more likely to decrease their alcohol intake and less likely to increase it than women, probably because of a differential impact of the reduction of social activities on gendered social roles. The people most affected were smokers and those living in a dwelling in which someone had been infected, including themselves. Conclusions:

The crisis tended to polarize alcohol consumption toward extremes. If the new drinking habits were to continue, the consequences could be beneficial for occasional drinkers but harmful for heavier drinkers. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 83, 000-000, 2022) TO MITIGATE THE CORONAVIRUS disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many countries have implemented unprecedented containment measures. In France, between March 17 and May 11, 2020, all nonessential economic activities were stopped and people had to stay at home: outings and outdoor activities were kept to a strict minimum. After 10 days, one French adult out of 10 was confined in an overcrowded dwelling, and, among those who were employed before the containment, 40% were still working out of their home, 20% were teleworking, and 40% had to stop working and stay at home (COronavirus et CONfinement: Enquête Longitudinale [COCONEL], 2020a). Limiting contacts with others often contributes to the development of negative feelings, isolation, and loneliness. These living conditions have been reported to likely cause stress and worries [START_REF] Brooks | The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: Rapid review of the evidence[END_REF]. Additionally, some persons have been personally infected, or have experienced the illness or death of friends and relatives. In France, after 2 weeks of containment measures, 37% of French adults reported poor mental health [START_REF] Peretti-Watel | Anxiety, depression and sleep problems: A second wave of COVID-19[END_REF]. Moreover, 74% had sleeping issues (COCONEL, 2020b), compared with 49% in 2017 [START_REF] Peretti-Watel | Anxiety, depression and sleep problems: A second wave of COVID-19[END_REF].

Anxiety related to the Covic-19 pandemic has been found to be associated with alcohol use in the United States [START_REF] Avery | Stress, anxiety, and change in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings among adult twin pairs[END_REF]. In Germany, an increase of alcohol use during the same period was reported [START_REF] Koopmann | Did the general population in Germany drink more alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown?[END_REF]. Practitioners as well as public health researchers have also warned about potential deleterious consequences of the containment, including failing to make a successful quit attempt, relapse after quitting smoking or drinking, or an increase of alcohol misuse [START_REF] Clay | Alcohol use and misuse during the COVID-19 pandemic: A potential public health crisis[END_REF][START_REF] Patwardhan | COVID-19: Risk of increase in smoking rates among England's 6 million smokers and relapse among England's 11 million exsmokers[END_REF][START_REF] Testino | Alcohol consumption in the COVID-19 era[END_REF]. Indeed, for many individuals, this containment period increased the amount of unstructured time and the number of opportunities to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. More generally, the literature on motivational models of alcohol use and smoking (e.g., [START_REF] Avery | Stress, anxiety, and change in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings among adult twin pairs[END_REF][START_REF] Cox | A motivational model of alcohol use[END_REF][START_REF] Revell | Smoking as a coping strategy[END_REF] points out that people may use cigarettes or alcohol to help them cope with stressful life events, either at the micro level (e.g., divorce) or at the macro level (e.g., economic recession). During the containment, people had to cope with various stressors: worries about being infected, or about infected relatives, income or job loss, and living in unsuitable housing.

The objectives of this study are to describe evolutions in alcohol and tobacco consumption in the French population during the containment and to investigate associated factors, including several indicators of stressors related to either the pandemic or the containment itself. The underlying hypothesis was that the containment had a different effects on alcohol and tobacco consumption according to living conditions.

Method

Design of the survey

The COCONEL survey was based on a cross-sectional sample randomly selected each week from an online research panel of more than 750,000 French individuals, authorized by the French National Agency for Data Protection (CNIL). We applied a sampling method to achieve a sample of 1,005 respondents (including 530 women) out of the 25,800 invitations mailed out, representative for the French population aged 18 and over in terms of age, gender, occupation, and population in the area of residence. Collected data were weighted to match official French census statistics for age, gender, geographical area, size of municipality, household income, education level, and occupation. The study design was approved by the ethical committee of the University Hospital Institute Méditerranée Infection (#2020-018). The data collection took place after 4 weeks of containment.

Data

Regarding COVID-19-related stressors, respondents were asked how much they worry about being infected by the coronavirus, with a mark from 0 (not worry at all) to 10 (great worry) encoded into a ternary outcome: low worry (mark < 6), medium worry (6-7), high worry (8-10). Respondents were asked about confirmed cases of COVID-19 in their household (including themselves) or among their relatives. Containment-related stressors-household size and housing surface area-were used to identify respondents confined in overcrowded households (<200 square feet per capita). We also collected information about financial difficulties experienced because of the containment measures and current occupational status: currently working from workplace, teleworking, unemployed because of the containment measures, unemployed or out of work before the containment measures.

We asked for frequencies of alcohol consumption before and during the containment with two questions derived from the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Consumption questions (AUDIT-C; [START_REF] Bush | The AUDIT alcohol consumption questions (AUDIT-C): An effective brief screening test for problem drinking[END_REF]: "Prior to containment/Since the containment, how often did you drink alcoholic beverages, i.e. wine, beer, spirits or other alcoholic beverages such as cider, port, champagne?" Response items were as follows: every day, 4-6 days a week, 2-3 days a week, 1 day a week, less often. A third question asked for the change in quantities consumed on a consumption day: "Since the containment, your alcohol consumption may have changed. Since the containment, on a day you drank alcohol", Response items were: "You drink larger quantities than before containment," "You drink smaller quantities than before containment," "You drink the same amount as you did before the containment."

Finally, we assessed tobacco cigarette smoking before and during the containment with two questions: "Prior to containment/Since the containment, did you smoke tobacco cigarettes?

This included all forms of tobacco cigarettes (rolled, tubed, manufactured) but not the e-cigarette." Response items were as follows: no smoking, smoking less than one cigarette a week, less than one cigarette a day, 1-5 cigarettes a day, [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], more than 20 cigarettes a day.

Statistical analysis

We combined the three alcohol-related questions in a three-level synthetic indicator of change of weekly alcohol intake since the containment: decrease (decrease in frequency and quantity; decrease in either frequency or quantity and stability in the other), increase (defined symmetrically), and stability (none of the previous). We assessed potential changes in smoking by comparing respondents' answers to the two questions regarding smoking before and during the containment. The agreement/stability between frequencies of alcohol and of tobacco use before and during the containment were computed using the weighted kappa indicator [START_REF] Cohen | Weighted kappa: Nominal scale agreement with provision for scaled disagreement or partial credit[END_REF]); values of .61-.80 and of .81-1.00 indicating strong and almost perfect agreement, respectively [START_REF] Landis | The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data[END_REF]. Bivariate statistics used the Pearson chi-square test.

Multivariate adjusted risk ratios (aRRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were computed using modified Poisson regressions with robust variance [START_REF] Zou | A Modified Poisson Regression Approach to Prospective Studies with Binary Data[END_REF]). All analyses were conducted using SAS Version 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC).

Results

Changes in alcohol use

The comparison of alcohol consumption frequencies before and during the containment showed a good stability (κ = .79): the proportions of daily drinkers and almost daily drinkers (4-6 days a week) were respectively 8% and 6% before the containment and 9% and 7% after.

Overall, 21% of respondents decreased their weekly alcohol consumption; 66% reported stability and 13% an increase. The decrease was more frequent among infrequent drinkers (less than 3 days of consumption per week) than among the more frequent drinkers (22% vs. 13%, p = .016), whereas the increase was equally reported by these two categories (13% each, p = .900). The decrease of alcohol intake was more frequent among people engaged in a noncohabiting couple, unemployed people, and people who did not smoke before the containment measures (p < .05 when compared with stability or increase; Table 1). Surprisingly, the fear of being infected was not linked with any change in the weekly intake.

[COMP: Table 1 about here]

Multivariate regressions confirmed most of these results (Table 1). Characteristics positively associated with a reduction of the weekly alcohol intake during the containment (as opposed to stability or increase) were being a man (aRR = 1.41, [1.04, 1.92]); being unemployed before the containment (aRR = 1.68, [1.06, 2.66]) (as opposed to currently working outside); having a high education level (at least 3 years of university instead of less than high school (aRR = 1.47 [1.04, 2.07]); being in a noncohabiting couple (aRR = 1.82 [1.14, 2.89]) or single (aRR = 1.69 [1.21,2.38]), as opposed to living as a couple at home. Characteristics negatively associated with a reduction were being older than 70 years old (aRR = 0.53 [0.29, 0.98]) as opposed to being ages 18-30, having been drinking at least 4 days a week (aRR = 0.60 [0.37, 0.98], or having been smoking more than 10 cigarettes a day before the containment (aRR = 0.49 [0.27, 0.87]), as opposed to having been a nonsmoker. Belonging to a household where someone has been infected by the COVID-19 and the level of worries of being infected had no significant effect.

In contrast, the only characteristics associated with an increase in the weekly alcohol intake were living in an overcrowded dwelling (aRR = 0.35 [0.15, 0.78] and a great worry of being infected (aRR = 0.59 [0.36, 0.98]).

Changes in tobacco consumption

Before the containment measures, 17% of respondents were daily tobacco smokers with 8% smoking 10 cigarettes or more per day. The corresponding figures during the containment were respectively 18% and 9%, showing a remarkable stability (κ = .88). Overall, only 2.8% of respondents reported smoking more since the containment (that is, 9.6% of the smokers), and 1.2% having reduced or ceased their consumption (9.4% of the smokers). People who were forced to stop working or to telework increased their consumption compared with the people who continued working (5.5% vs. 1.9%, p = .0479) or with those who were not working (5.5% vs. 1.4%, p = .001). People living in overcrowded dwellings increased their smoking less often than the others (2.3% vs. 7.4%, p = .002). None of these effects remained significant in multivariate analysis (results not shown).

Discussion

Before discussing our results, we have to acknowledge limitations of the present study.

First, a noncoverage bias: only 89% of the households had access to the Internet in 2019 [START_REF] Legleye | Une personne sur six n'utilise pas Internet, plus d'un usager sur trois manque de compétences numériques de base[END_REF]. Unequipped households are older and have lower socioeconomic status than the others, two features relating to alcohol and tobacco use (but accounted for by the weighting procedure). Second, our study relies on respondent's self-declarations. Social desirability bias is generally low in online surveys [START_REF] Kreuter | Social desirability bias in CATI, IVR, and web surveys: The effects of mode and question sensitivity[END_REF], but asking current and past frequencies of use at the same time may still bias reports of each in similar ways. As a consequence, this should not have affected much the measurement of change, which was our variable of interest. Our sample is of small size (n = 1,005) but more gender-balanced (52.7% of women) than most collected online (70% to 80%; [START_REF] Busse | Engagement in health risk behaviours before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in German university students: Results of a cross-sectional study[END_REF][START_REF] Schmits | Changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic: Impact of the lockdown conditions and mental health factors[END_REF][START_REF] Vanderbruggen | Self-reported alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use during COVID-19 lockdown measures: Results from a web-based survey[END_REF].

Our first result is that the containment led to reductions more often than increases in alcohol consumption. It is corroborated by another recent French online survey in which 24% of the past drinkers decreased their use whereas 11% increased it during the containment [START_REF] Guignard | Changes in smoking and alcohol consumption during COVID-19related lockdown: A cross-sectional study in France[END_REF] and by the sales data that were down during the containment compared with the same period the year before (Observatoire Français des Drogues et des Toxicomanies [OFDT], 2020).

The COVID sanitary crisis led to specific societal and cultural trends in the relationship to alcohol [START_REF] Chick | Alcohol and COVID-19[END_REF], but alcohol use increased in many countries. For example, in a study in Bergen in April 2020, self-assessed increased alcohol consumption during the lockdown period was reported by 13% of the sample [START_REF] Eiken Alpers | Alcohol consumption during a pandemic lockdown period and change in alcohol consumption related to worries and pandemic measures[END_REF]. In Belgium, a study showed that individuals drank a bit more alcohol during the containment than before [START_REF] Vanderbruggen | Self-reported alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use during COVID-19 lockdown measures: Results from a web-based survey[END_REF] and the same was found in the United States [START_REF] Mcketta | Trends in US alcohol consumption frequency during the first wave of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic[END_REF], whereas reports of increases (35%) were almost twice as frequent as those of decreases (19%) in Germany [START_REF] Koopmann | Did the general population in Germany drink more alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown?[END_REF]. That alcohol use decreased in France is thus somewhat surprising.

Indeed, France has many classic features of the wet alcohol drinking culture [START_REF] Room | Typologies of the cultural position of drinking[END_REF]: Drinking occasions are associated with particular moments of conviviality that have largely disappeared during the containment. But this is not unique to France, and the convergence of drinking patterns across cultures [START_REF] Savic | Defining "drinking culture": A critical review of its meaning and connotation in social research on alcohol problems[END_REF] invites caution in using a general cultural argument.

However, the French Government immediately applied unconditional measures to support economic activity and compensate for lost income (salaries, unemployment benefits, allowances), and social rights. This specificity may have helped limit the economic consequences of the health crisis and the associated stress, especially among the most vulnerable.

In fact, we did not find significant differences according to reported financial difficulties, preexisting or because of the lockdown; living in an overcrowded dwelling was associated with reduced risk of increasing one's alcohol consumption; a low education level was associated only with fewer chances to have reduced one's consumption; and the unemployed more frequently reported a decrease in their use during this period. The global picture is thus that the most at-risk populations have not been as affected as specialists feared at the beginning of containment. We nevertheless acknowledge that further investigations are needed to understand the global decrease in alcohol use in France.

Nevertheless, a part of the population (13%) increased its alcohol intake during the containment. Several factors may have contributed to this increase. Social isolation and loneliness have been identified as predictors of alcohol use and misuse [START_REF] Algren | Social isolation, loneliness, socioeconomic status, and health-risk behaviour in deprived neighbourhoods in Denmark: A cross-sectional study[END_REF][START_REF] Leigh-Hunt | An overview of systematic reviews on the public health consequences of social isolation and loneliness[END_REF], especially in older people [START_REF] Kharicha | Health risk appraisal in older people 1: Are older people living alone an "at-risk" group?[END_REF] and in problematic users [START_REF] Ingram | Loneliness among people with substance use problems: A narrative systematic review[END_REF]. Individuals personally affected by the virus (or whose relative was affected) were also more at risk, as in [START_REF] Avery | Stress, anxiety, and change in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings among adult twin pairs[END_REF]).

In our study, men were more likely to decrease their weekly alcohol intake and less likely to increase it than women. This result is opposed to what has been observed in previous public health crises [START_REF] Rehm | Decreases of life expectancy despite decreases in noncommunicable disease mortality: The role of substance use and socioeconomic status[END_REF] or economic crises [START_REF] De Goeij | How economic crises affect alcohol consumption and alcohol-related health problems: A realist systematic review[END_REF], considering that the COVID-19 pandemic is a social and economic crisis. It could, however, be explained by traditional gendered social roles: the reduction of activities resulted in fewer opportunities to drink outside the home for men more than for women, whereas the latter assumed greater responsibility for the education of children deprived of schooling [START_REF] Albouy | Living conditions during lockdown: Gaps based on standard of living and socio-professional category[END_REF], resulting in increased stress.

Our second result is the stability of tobacco smoking reports. It seems less robust as it is not confirmed in the study by [START_REF] Guignard | Changes in smoking and alcohol consumption during COVID-19related lockdown: A cross-sectional study in France[END_REF] that found more increase (27%) than decrease (19%) nor in official selling data (OFDT, 2020).

The containment was a period of social isolation, psychological distress, and, for some, of economic losses. It also reduced the access to addiction care services and support networks, which may have had deleterious consequences for patients. However, the sanitary crisis has allowed the development of measures such as telemedicine (Uscher-Pines et al., 2020) and remote harm reduction for illicit drugs [START_REF] Crowley | A national model of remote care for assessing and providing opioid agonist treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic: A report[END_REF], which could contribute to reduce territorial inequalities in access to addiction care [START_REF] Leibowitz | A telemedicine approach to increase treatment of alcohol use disorder in primary care: A pilot feasibility study[END_REF][START_REF] López-Pelayo | The post-COVID era": Challenges in the treatment of substance use disorder (SUD) after the pandemic[END_REF]. The long-term balance of the two is still uncertain.

In 2020, in France, about 65,000 people died because of COVID-19, whereas tobacco and alcohol are responsible respectively for 73,000 and 41,000 deaths every year. It is thus crucial to monitor their use during and in the months and years after the COVID-19 crisis to distinguish short-term from long-term effects, especially by gender and socioeconomic status [START_REF] Kontopantelis | Disparities in mortality among 25-44-year-olds in England: A longitudinal, population-based study[END_REF][START_REF] Rehm | Decreases of life expectancy despite decreases in noncommunicable disease mortality: The role of substance use and socioeconomic status[END_REF]. It is also crucial to implement effective, innovative, and evidence-based actions aiming at maintaining healthy lifestyles and reducing alcohol and tobacco consumption [START_REF] Lange | Coronavirus disease 2019 crisis and intentional injuries: Now is not the time to erode alcohol control policies[END_REF].

TABLE 1 .

 1 Increase and decrease of weekly alcohol intake since the containment measures (risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals) Notes: COCONEL survey, April 15-17 2020, N = 1,005; modified Poisson regressions with robust variance. Bold indicates aRR with p < .05; underlined indicates p < .1. p = Pearson chi-square p value for the percentages; aRR = adjusted risk ratio; CI = confidence interval; p* = Wald chisquare p value for the risk ratios; cig. = cigarettes. a Before the containment.

	Reduction	Increase

This work was supported by the French National Research Agency, the Fondation de France and the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (grant number ANR-20-COVI-0035-01). Patrick Peretti-Watel designed the survey and was the lead investigator in the COronavirus et CONfinement: Enquête Longitudinale [COCONEL] project. Stéphane Legleye and François Beck designed the questionnaire of the study. Patrick Peretti-

Conflict-of-Interest Statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.