Despite holding a mammoth potential for generating clean hydropower, every three in ten rural Nepalese continue to live in darkness. They lack access to the national grid, and the generation of electricity is centralized which is barely keeping up with rising demand as the country urbanizes fast. The national target, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, is to strive for universal access to modern sources of clean energy well within 2030.
This study, Universalizing Clean Energy in Nepal: A plan for sustainable distributed generation and grid access to all by 2022, represents a bold policy foray, jointly undertaken by the National Planning Commission and the Nepal Electricity Authority’s Engineering Company. It presents insights for policymakers and offers a practical guide for relevant stakeholders to undertake the ambitious task of supplying electricity to each municipality with their own generation. It presents a financially viable distributed generator for each of the 753 municipalities and optimal expansion of national grid to each municipality.