Sustainable Energy for All, a global initiative led by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, seeks to achieve universal access to modern energy services by 2030. The high-level group is co-chaired by leading figures representing private and public sectors—Charles Holliday and Kandeh Yumkella. The former is the Chairman of Bank of America and the latter Chair of UN-Energy, and Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization. The group is an amalgam of academics, investors and leaders who have the capacity to design and implement a comprehensive solution to energy and climate problems by properly valuing externalities of the economic process. The initiative relies on an effective collaboration between private and public sectors for successful implementation of a global program. To achieve the goal of universal access to modern energy services by 2030 the initiative expects a doubling of energy efficiency and a doubling of the share of renewable energy in the global energy portfolio.
A country like Nepal can benefit from both pathways envisioned in this global attempt to achieve energy sustainability. Nepal’s energy drudgery may come to an end if Nepali policymakers are up to the task. A nation’s energy consumption intensity is regularly used to gauge its economic development and prosperity. Providing ample quantities of affordable energy is a pre-requisite for economic development in industrial societies. In context of poor countries like Nepal successful implementation of Sustainable Energy for All will also reduce health costs associated with using lower grades of energy (wood, animal waste, etc.). Furthermore, access to flexible fuel fosters a range of other activities that can contribute to social and economic development, particularly for women and children. Women in rural areas will spend less time in subsistence activities and could engage in the household economy. For the urbanities reductions in load-shedding hours will open up new opportunities for jobs, security and economic activities.
The UN Secretary-led initiative has come at the right time, as the central tenet of energy policies in the developed countries is also shifting. Cheap, clean and reliable energy is the new motto. Advanced economies are integrating energy and environment issues to seek a holistic approach to address climate change impacts. Proposals that seek to slow the global trends of emissions in the short term and gradually reduce it over the next couple of decades are being considered. Any programs that demonstrate the reduction in greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions vis-à-vis reduction in energy consumption without adversely affecting economic growth are sought the most.
Depending on the structure of economies, population dynamics and available resources different kinds of programs could be designed. While developed countries may find opportunities in reducing GHG emissions through sector-wide changes in the source of primary energy, developing countries may design programs that can expand access to clean energy. Programs that seek to reduce indoor air pollution, increase fuel efficiency, provide energy flexibility and support production activities alongside subsistence activities are important for a country like Nepal.
There, however, is a big hurdle in including co-benefits of climate change abatement programs in climate policy making. Climate policy debates in the past have been framed in terms of cost minimization. Co-benefits of emission reductions are only represented by a gross and crude estimate if not completely ignored citing the uncertainty in evaluating climatic damages, inconsistency in valuation and institutional barriers in service delivery. The indirect benefits of climate change policies are used as a hedge by developed countries to measure the marginal cost benefits of pollution abatement.
This co-benefit would be significant in context of least developed countries. Nearly 40 percent of world population is on the lower side of household energy ladder and the human lives lost every year due to lack of access of flexible energy is enormous. According to the World Health Organization nearly three billion people use biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal as subsistence energy and three million people die prematurely from illness attributable to indoor air pollution resulting from fuel burning. In context of Nepal, energy derived from biomass contributes 87 percent of annual per capita energy consumption of 80kWh. A little more than 56 percent households in Nepal have access (albeit unreliable) to electricity for lighting.
Providing access to modern energy can reduce health service delivery costs too. If the marginal costs are integrated in these assessments then the actual benefit increases. It will reduce the cost of implementing two Millennium Development Goals directly—Goal 4 (reducing child mortality) and Goal 5 (improve maternal health). Other MDGs, Goal 7 (ensuring environmental sustainability) and Goal 2 (universal education), will also benefit.
In Nepal’s Status Paper drafted by the National Planning Commission (NPC) for the Rio+20 Conferences, Deependra Bahadur Kshetry, vice-chair of the NPC and chair of the Steering Committee, noted that Nepal had comparative advantages in developing renewable energy, among others sectors, contributing to sustainable development. The status report identifies implementation gaps as the major hurdle in meeting MDG. The document neither denunciated lack of action at all levels of UN nor identify core action areas for improving service delivery in Nepal. The importance of good governance, equitable distribution of costs and benefits and including social costs of economic development cannot be materialized without proactive engagement in global climate policy making. According to the Global Employment Trends 2012 Nepal’s economy grew by just 3.5 percent while the average economic growth of South Asia was 7.2 percent. Weak infrastructure, including electricity and uneasy labor relations are identified as factors impeding the Nepali economy. Expanding Nepal’s access to clean energy has the potential to transform the country that has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.
The author is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose research focuses on Renewable Energy Policy
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