Addressing Energy Poverty in the light of Climate Change in Rural Nepal

Energy is the heart of the development discourse-it is the fulcrum of human well-being and economic growth. Unfortunately, the majority in the Global South lacks access to adequate energy services, resulting in Energy Poverty (EP); the deprivation which adversely impacts health and wellbeing, social participation outcomes, and limits economic development (IEA 2020). Under climate change (CC), the challenge to alleviate EP is complicated as CC impacts energy demands and adversely affects energy infrastructure (Sattler 2016). It is therefore crucial to explore EP in the light of CC as we attempt to design policy that is sensitive to future generations in EP alleviation.
In Nepal, 70% of the population lack access to clean fuel and technologies despite the progress in coverage and quality of electricity access (World Bank 2020). Concurrently, Nepal ranks seventh for CC impacts in the world, with critical impacts on water resources and its significant hydropower generation (Pathak 2010). Existing policy on EP alleviation and CC is not sufficiently converging and fails to address current challenges effectively, let alone the vulnerability of future generations. Therefore, this project attempts to fill this gap by addressing EP, given current and projected CC impacts in the context of Nepal.
Globally, there is disagreement on how EP is conceptualised and measured (Thomson 2020). Most existing approaches fail to address its multidimensional nature and those that do, fall short in integrating the impacts of CC and addressing the vulnerabilities of future generations (see Pachauri and Spreng 2011, Nussbaumer et al. 2012). These approaches lack an underpinning framework that can address both EP and CC in policy agendas. Serious attempts to integrate energy and CC policy are either limited to the developed world (Lovell et al. 2009) or technical in nature, with insufficient consideration of socio-cultural dimensions. There is scarce consideration of the social realm in Nepalese EP discourse, which emphasises an access-based approach and the simplistic idea of the 'energy ladder' (Parajuli 2011). The Nepalese Energy Policy (GoN 2013), which uses the term EP just three times throughout the document, still takes a conventional approach on infrastructural access and increased consumption. It fails to acknowledge the multidimensional nature of EP and falls short in addressing the CC impacts. Conversely, CC policy (GoN 2011) does not address energy vulnerabilities. Research on Nepal is inadequate in exploring energy choices of rural households, especially from CC perspective. Despite growth in access to electricity, use of clean fuel has remained stable (World Bank 2020) and biomass is still the preferred fuel choice in rural areas, which contributes significant Nepalese energy consumption.
Recently, EP scholars have turned to the Capability Approach (CA) to integrate rights-based perspectives. The CA application to energy, first developed by Day et al (2016), positions energy as means to expand capabilities and multi-dimensional wellbeing rather than an end in itself. This approach urges consideration of how capabilities may be realised in alternative ways, whilst contextualising in CC. There have also been debates on capability ceilings (Holland 2015) and the capabilities of future generations (Lessmann et al 2013) as a way to address CC. As such, the CA provides a potentially fruitful conceptual approach to integrate EP and CC concerns in Nepal. This project aims to address EP problems in Nepal in the light of CC impacts, with an aim to shape policy to alleviate EP that is sensitive to future generations. In order to do so, this project sets the following objectives:
-Understand rural household's energy choices in relation to the perceived relationship with capabilities and with reference to the impacts of CC.
-Explore the impact of CC on EP and the energy system vulnerability in Nepal, and institutional/governance reaction to this.