Nepal can level up tourism with electricity

As a micro-hydro engineer working in rural Nepal in the mid-1980’s, I struggled to find money to build power plants that could meet the energy demand along the Everest and Annapurna trekking trails.

Communities in Lukla, Namche, Jomsom and Ghandruk needed energy to meet basic needs of trekkers, and provide value-added services for additional income. Tourists were prepared to pay for hot showers, cold beer, clean beds, and a varied menu.

But resource limitation meant there were fewer and smaller power plants. The national electricity grid was then limited to urban areas and the country’s electrification rate was low and stayed below 20%. The Nepal Electricity Corporation (NEC) , the predecessor of NEA, had constructed a dozen small hydro projects for remote districts with no immediate prospects of being supplied by the grid. 

Some of these were in tourist areas but were woefully inadequate to supply more than domestic lighting load. The 240 kW Chokhopani small hydropower project, commissioned by NEC in 1984, to supply the Thak Khola region of Mustang, was overloaded within a couple of years of its construction after tourist lodges in Tukuche, Marpha, and Jomsom began plugging in electric space heaters and hot plates.

Following the 1984 delicensing of generation from power plants of less than 100kW capacity, Nepal saw a dramatic surge in interest from rural communities to invest in micro-hydropower.

While smaller systems could meet the needs for power for home lighting and tv sets in non-tourist areas, communities along tourist trails wanted larger power plants to cook and heat with electricity and run refrigerators.

The Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) provided a grant to cover 70% of the cost of the 50kW Ghandruk project. Completed in 1990, it was designed to supply 250 households and 20 hotels. However, to make sure there was sufficient power to connect the whole community, each hotel was limited to a subscription of one kW of power — not enough to meet cooking needs. 

The hotels were encouraged to turn on immersion water heaters at night to speed up cooking in the morning. Recognising that micro-hydropower projects could only partially supply their energy needs, ACAP also helped hotels install solar hot water systems for showers and import LPG for cooking.

The 600kW Thame project in the Everest region was completed in 1995 with a grant from the Austrian government to supply 629 homes and tourism businesses of Namche Bazar, Khumjung and Thame. For the first time in Nepal, it was able to demonstrate how much value an abundant supply of electricity could add to mountain tourism.

Electricity reduced pressure on scarce, high altitude biomass and provided an alternative for families that were caught between strict rules prohibiting firewood collection from the Sagarmatha National Park, and the need of increasing numbers of trekkers, guides, and porters. 

Electricity was used in place of firewood not only by hotels and cafes, but also in the kitchens of 60% of the households. Electricity from the Thame power plant allows Namche Bazar today to meet the fuel needs of more than 40,000 trekkers a year, double the annual visitors when it was built 30 years ago.

The electricity supply also opened up new livelihood opportunities. Stores selling handicrafts and climbing gear, tea shops, pubs, restaurants, lodges, laundromats, cyber cafes, jacuzzi, water treatment and bottling plants, and three electricity-powered bakeries, and pizzeries all came up. 

Another early benefit from Namche’s electrification was the improvement in water supply because it could now be pumped up from a spring to a reservoir with slow-sand filtration at the top of the village. Piped water supply from the reservoir and a sewage system, also managed by the power utility, Khumbu Bijuli Company, allowed hotels to offer rooms with attached bathrooms with hot showers and charge significantly higher for rooms. 

Other electricity-enabled infrastructure include cell phone towers, of which Namche has two, and the potential for cable cars to take visitors to viewpoints and ropeways to transport goods.

Since the earliest days of trekking tourism, the environmental carrying capacity of the local ecosystem has been limited by the availability of energy. Without access to commercial energy from the outside, the number of trekkers, and their accompanying support teams, that any region can host depends on the rate at which trees can regenerate there. 

High altitude areas like the Khumbu face a natural limit based on the slow rates at which trees can grow. Arid trans-Himalayan regions like Upper Mustang and Dolpo can sustainably harvest even less biomass. The government continues to restrict tourism areas in the trans-Himalaya, with fragile ecosystems, requiring foreign visitors to pay for permits. 

Trekking groups are required to carry their own fuel to avoid strain on the local ecosystem. In Upper Mustang the number of visitors is limited to 1,000 annually and requires each visitor to pay a $500 fee for a ten day visit. Other restricted areas include border communities in Humla, Gorkha, Dolpo, Manang, and Manaslu.

Since then, Nepal’s electricity generation landscape has undergone a dramatic transformation. The country currently has a surplus from hydropower and solar energy. This is expected to keep growing for the foreseeable future. Harnessing this electricity to boost mountain tourism can enhance local livelihoods and reduce outmigration of youth.

The tourism sector employs 1 million people and contributes 8% to Nepal’s GDP. In comparison, more than 3.5 million Nepalis work abroad and their remittances make up 27% of GDP. Growth in the tourism sector could significantly expand employment opportunities at home. 

Namche Bazar is proof that electricity can take mountain tourism to the next level both by increasing the carrying capacity of high Himalayan regions by substituting for biomass fuel, and increasing employment through value-added services and infrastructure development. 

Electrifying the country’s tourism sector has the potential to significantly increase its contribution to the economy, and take it closer to another tourism-powered South Asian country, the Maldives, where tourism’s share of the economy is 60%. 

Given that Nepal’s electricity is from renewable resources, any tourism it powers can also be marketed as producing minimal greenhouse gases. If tourists could be transported in electric vehicles to and from the airport and to the roadhead leading to their trekking destinations, it would further lower emissions. This is an additional selling point at a time when many environmentally conscious tourists are looking to lower their carbon footprint.

The NEA can play an important role by increasing the supply, capacity, and reliability of electricity along existing, popular trekking trails. The extension of the national grid to Tilicho Base Camp last week is the right step.

Even though the country’s electrification rate has now reached 99%, supply challenges remain. The task is made easier for NEA since practically all regions with tourism potential have hydropower projects either operating or under construction within their own districts. This makes it much easier to ensure a reliable supply with good voltage.

In the Annapurna region, electricity has reached nearly all communities with Ghandruk and Jomsom connected to the national grid in 2017 and 2018 respectively. However, without improved reliability of supply, tourism enterprises will continue to use firewood and imported LPG for cooking. 

In light of the damage caused by the glacial lake outburst flood that hit Thame in August, the power supply for Namche and the region would be much more resilient if it was connected to the national grid. NEA also needs to extend transmission lines to Upper Mustang and other restricted areas that aspire to host higher tourist numbers than they are currently allowed. 

Investment in extending power supply along the 16 districts traversed by the Great Himalayan Trail would accelerate the development of green and sustainable tourism in those areas. For other tourism sites where NEA does not plan to extend the grid in the next five years, micro-hydro and solar energy will remain important solutions. 

The two 900 kW mini-hydro projects under construction to supply the villages of Ama Dablam and Monjo, both in the Everest region, are good examples of the support the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre needs to continue to provide for off-grid power to support the tourism sector.

Bikash Pandey is Director of Clean Energy and Circular Economy at Winrock International. People Power is his regular column in Nepali Times on global energy issues relevant to Nepal.