The World Bank recently published its fourth edition of “RISE-Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable Energy”, a global policy report in which it assesses the national policy and regulatory frameworks for sustainable energy across 140 countries, covering as such 98% of the world’s population. The assessment is based on around 30 indicators that average the score of four major pillars, namely access to electricity, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean cooking. All indicators are equally weighted and are assigned scores ranging between 0 and 100, and countries are accordingly classified in each of the aforementioned pillars under three traffic light colors (green, yellow, and red), representing their level of advancement in the concerned pillar, as follows:

• Green: Score of 67 to 100 – “relatively mature policy environment”;
• Yellow: Score of 34 to 66 – “serious efforts” have been launched “to develop a policy framework”;
• Red: Score 0 to 33 – “policy adoption remains at an early stage”.

According to the report, some adjustments were made to refine the indicators and sub indicators of all the pillars for all countries in order to better reflect the changes in the energy sector and accordingly, the results of the RISE 2022 report cannot be directly compared to results from the previous editions.

In this vein, the report shows a modest improvement in the adoption of advanced policy frameworks geared towards fostering sustainable energy across the globe, with the number of countries implementing such frameworks increasing from 60 in 2019 to 68 in 2021. The report noted that 80% of surveyed countries reported an improvement in their overall scores, driving the global average from 57 in 2019 to 60 in 2021. This progress was witnessed across all regions, with no regions (including Sub-Saharan Africa) lingering in the red color zone as of the year 2021. On the other hand, the report noted that the pace of improvement during the 2019-2021 period was slower than that recorded during the 2017-2019 period. The report commented as well that the progress made during the 2019-2021 period was uneven across regions, with Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean registering the fastest progress. The World Bank pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic has negative and positive effects on sustainable energy policies, as the ability to provide some basic services came under stress, yet recovery plans included sustainable energy policies. The report also pointed out that the effects of the Ukraine war were not incorporated in this report, as it occurred during the 2022 calendar year.

Delving further into details, Denmark and Germany emerged as the world’s leading countries in the policy framework for sustainable energy with an overall RISE score of 92, followed by the Republic of Korea & the United Kingdom (overall score: 91), and Hungary, Ireland & Portugal (overall score: 89) only to name a few. Locally, Lebanon’s RISE score reached 69 (green zone) in 2021. More particularly, Lebanon scored 100 (green zone) in access to modern energy, 43 (green zone) in energy efficiency, and 64 (green zone) in the renewable energy component. Finally, the World Bank commented that Lebanon was amongst the best five improvers in terms of renewable energy in the world in the year 2021.