‘It’s expensive’: Syria’s electricity has improved, but challenges remain

Damascus, Syria – Nasri Tadros sweeps particulate distant from the electrical scooters parked extracurricular his tiny store successful cardinal Damascus.

“I person 3 generators for my shop, and this runs connected batteries,” helium said, pointing to a battery-operated lighter helium uses to occurrence up charcoal. He stepped into the constrictive store that helium rents, wherever helium has worked for the past 2 years, selling and delivering products for hookahs.

Around Damascus, star panels and diesel generators are a communal sight. During the harshest years of the war, they supplemented the sparse state-provided electricity, which lone came a fewer hours a time betwixt agelong cuts.

As Damascus enters the summertime months, determination is interest astir the adust heat, which reaches the precocious 30s successful Celsius (up to astir 100F). However, locals accidental that portion cuts are inactive common, energy has precocious improved to 5 oregon six consecutive hours of proviso earlier a cut.

“Nothing tin enactment without electricity,” Tadros said, the aerial conditioning blasting distant wrong his humble store.

Progress

By the extremity of the dynastic regularisation of the Assad authorities – begetter Hafez (1970-2000) and lad Bashar (2000-24) – Syria was near successful ruins. A fashionable 2011 uprising was brutally repressed by Bashar and the state dilatory crumbled until a rebel cognition forced the longtime ruling household into exile.

Bashar al-Assad’s departure successful precocious 2024 was met with large joyousness by galore Syrians, but helium near down a situation for Syria’s liberators. The country’s system is successful dire straits, and authorities infrastructure, including the energy sector, requires superior rebuilding.

As of 2023, earlier the autumn of the Assad regime, Syria received 52 percent of its energy from earthy state and adjacent to 45 percent from oil, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Only 3 percent came from hydropower and adjacent little from solar.

In June 2025, the World Bank approved a $146m assistance to amended Syria’s energy proviso and to make the sector. When the authorities of President Ahmed al-Sharaa moved into northeast Syria earlier this year, it took implicit the country’s largest oil-producing region.

During the war, the area, which was controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), produced astir 10,000 barrels of lipid per day. Now, it is astir 100,000bpd and could scope up to 200,000bpd by the extremity of the year. After the Syrian army’s offensive, the authorities and the SDF reached a ceasefire.

The Syrian authorities has besides secured state import deals with countries similar Azerbaijan, Jordan and Egypt, and successful May 2025 signed a $7bn vigor woody with Qatari, Turkish and US firms. Much of this advancement has travel astir acknowledgment to Western sanctions relief, which has been a precedence of the caller government.

“Consumer tariffs person been restructured, and star powerfulness is helping, albeit modestly, to capable the gap,” John Calabrese, a nonresident elder chap astatine the Middle East Institute, told Al Jazeera.

Remaining challenges

However, the spread remains. Almost everyone interviewed astir Syria’s energy concern turned the speech towards affordability and the precocious outgo of alternate energy.

“I would beryllium lying if I said energy was not improving,” a store owner, who asked his sanction beryllium withheld due to the fact that helium was captious of the caller government, told Al Jazeera. “I person star energy,” helium added. “But it’s expensive.”

While star panels person go a much regular show successful Damascus, star vigor has a precocious archetypal concern cost, which means galore low-income families, with astir 90 percent of the state beneath the poorness line, cannot spend it.

“Fuel supplies stay the halfway bottleneck,” Calabrese said. Syria has been suffering from substance shortages of late, causing agelong queues astatine petrol stations. The vigor curate announced connected Saturday that supplies of diesel and petrol were being increased, and organisation accelerated.

Other issues besides remain. Some reports accidental the Syrian Petroleum Company is facing interior tensions betwixt the CEO and the board.

“Bureaucratic and governance friction is an obstacle to further progress,” Calabrese said.

Back astatine the country store, the store proprietor who requested anonymity animatedly waved his arms successful the air. “In the archetypal world, energy is simply a right,” helium said successful heavy Damascene-accented Arabic. “Here, it is simply a dream.”