Nepal’s electricity sector continues to disproportionately benefit the rich, providing them with abundant, cheap and clean electricity to improve their lives, well-being, productivity and incomes. The poor, on the other hand, remain disadvantaged without the means or supportive policies to benefit fully from electricity.
Nowhere is this inequity more visible than in Nepali kitchens, although ‘visible’ may not be the appropriate word when dense smoke fills more than half of them. Millions of poor and rural households still cook in smoke-filled rooms over stoves fueled by biomass, such as wood and agricultural or forestry residue.
Approximately 25,000 die every year in Nepal from indoor air pollution, much of it resulting from smoke in the kitchen. This is more than twice the number of people killed or reported missing from natural calamities in Nepal over the last 12 months.
The lingering health damages from smoke-filled kitchens are likely far greater. No credible count exists because no one is counting. The drudgery and economic hardship of cooking with biomass are equally immense, from the time lost collecting fuel and preparing the fire to the inefficiency of cooking over it.
Electric cooking could radically reduce these hardships, providing people with a clean, safe and far more efficient cooking solution. So why is it that, despite abundant electricity and near-universal grid connection, millions of Nepalis still cannot switch to electric cooking, and many must rely on biomass for fuel?
A few years ago, Nepal set a national goal of making every Nepali kitchen smoke-free by the end of this decade. The plan envisioned shifting about a quarter of the population to electric cooking, and the remaining to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).
That was then. Nepal’s national electricity grid had not yet reached every corner of the country, and international gas prices were still relatively lower. Now, everything is different.
Nepal’s grid has reached virtually every home. Electricity can, in principle, flow into every kitchen for cooking. International gas prices are high; supplies are vulnerable and unreliable. The billions the government spent subsidising LPG were already straining public budgets. Now, continuing down this path is simply unviable.
When customer queues for LPG cylinders stretched for kilometres this summer, with many people having to return home empty-handed anyway, it became clear that the only feasible pathway to smokeless kitchens in Nepal is electric cooking.
Yet, despite the national goal, progress in expanding electric cooking has been slow even with the availability of electric cooking solutions, near-universal electricity access and abundant generation, and vulnerable, expensive cooking gas imports.
Studies and reports have identified many technical and resource constraints. Electric cooking appliances are not widely available in the market and sufficiently accessible to people. Awareness of these solutions remains low. The grid is weak, thin, and lacks the capacity to deliver the amount of electricity needed for widespread electric cooking. Nepal lacks the financial resources to make this transition smoothly and rapidly. Consumer costs are high, electricity is unreliable, and so on.
These challenges are all real and represent meaningful constraints. But challenges are the symptoms, not the fundamental reasons why electric cooking remains out of reach for millions of Nepalis.
The real story of Nepal’s failure to expand electric cooking is less about technical and resource constraints and more about the inequity of Nepal’s energy policies. To solve the problem of smoke-filled kitchens, Nepal’s electricity sector must first care enough about the people in those kitchens.
Traditional biomass, such as firewood, animal dung, agricultural and forestry residue, still accounts for approximately 68 percent of the total energy mix. This is an exceedingly high share for a country with universal access to electricity. Almost all of that traditional biomass is used for cooking.
Just over half of all Nepali households still use biomass as the primary cooking fuel. Almost all are low-income or poor households in rural areas. These are the people who live with the daily reality of smoke-filled kitchens and who would gain the most from switching to electric cooking. They also have the least influence over how decisions are made in the power sector. And therein lies the problem.
Decisions in the energy sector are not sufficiently centred on improving the lives of the poor who could benefit most from electricity for cooking. Consider an illustration of how decisions on investments are made in the power system.
At a hearing in the Development, Economic Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the National Assembly last month, Deputy Executive Director of the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC), Narayan Prasad Adhikari, estimated that Nepal’s electricity demand would increase by 3,000 MW if all Nepali households used electric induction cooking for just two hours a day.
Nepal’s total power capacity is about 4,300 MW, or just under 4,000 MW if hydro power plants damaged in the recent floods are excluded. New demand of 3,000 MW from electric cooking would therefore nearly double existing capacity, and that is for just two hours of cooking a day.
The irony is striking. Adhikari was describing AEPC’s estimate of potential power demand from electric cooking in the National Assembly, where lawmakers were exploring ways to increase domestic consumption of Nepal’s electricity.
Here’s the first rule for expanding electric cooking: people cooking in smoke-filled kitchens, and those struggling to obtain or afford an LPG cylinder, must matter. Their energy needs should not be a footnote. If that demand is fully incorporated into energy planning, it can justify new generation capacity and the distribution infrastructure needed to deliver electricity where it is needed.
The second point that Adhikary made to the National Assembly was that Nepal’s electricity infrastructure would not be able to handle this surge in demand from electric cooking.
The choke points are particularly acute in rural areas, where investments in power distribution and transmission have been neglected for years, partly because of the mistaken assumption that demand was too low to matter. Yet, as Adhikary estimated, electric cooking demand could alone represent 3,000 MW of latent demand, almost as much as Nepal’s entire generating capacity.
So here is the second rule on expanding electric cooking: correct the historic under-investments in rural power systems, particularly transmission and distribution. Recognise this latent demand when planning investments and build the infrastructure need to reliably serve that demand. The return on investments from servicing this domestic demand from cooking alone will be far greater than simply exporting to India.
None of this means that other technical and resource constraints limiting the expansion of electric cooking will simply disappear. They will not. But bringing demand on a scale approaching the country’s entire generation capacity will change everything—it can open markets and unlock constraints.
Equally, it changes who gets to shape Nepal’s energy future.
Representing the electric cooking power demand of a person in a smoke-filled kitchen is more than just expanding electric cooking or another unit of electricity. It is about giving that person agency in deciding how their power system evolves.