The most emerging problem facing the world today is climate change. The reason behind climate change, although debatable, is agreed by scientists to be the rampant use of fossil fuel as energy and deforestation globally in an unsustainable manner. Ultimately, it is proved that climate change is human-induced.
The demand for energy is ever increasing. While developing countries need a huge amount of it in order to achieve high economic growth rate, developed ones need energy to maintain things with huge demand for it. In both the cases, the entire economies depend on access to dependable and affordable energy. In this context, more the amount of energy available better will be the living standard of people that depend on the extent and degree of economic development. The miraculous economic development that the world has achieved today is the most probable outcome of technological innovation and advancement. These technological innovations from the days of internal combustion and jet engine to today’s rocket science and internet accessibility are largely based on the electric as well as fossil fuel energy. Most of the sources of the generation of electric energy are fossil fuel as the power is generated from coal and natural gas.
On the other hand, improving living standard of the people has increased the demand for physical facilities which require larger amount of energy to function. Consequently, the demand for energy increases for those facilities. Unlike other commodities, energy has a unique inelastic demand that leads to monopoly of a single source of energy with few substitutes. In the long run, fossil fuel is the most dependable source without which the physical facility the world enjoys today seems impossible albeit the efforts to develop alternatives.
The widespread and uncontrolled use of fossil fuel has a dire effect on the environment. Fossil fuel emits greenhouse gas (GHG) in the atmosphere producing carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 once produced remains in the atmosphere for 200 years. It follows that the impact of CO2 on the atmosphere goes on accumulating as well as contributing to the global warming. The realization of the importance to reduce GHG emissions has led to a series of climate change conferences the Copenhagen conference being held in December 2009 being one of them.
Poor countries like Nepal suffer the most from the effect of GHG emissions while they emit very little. The Copenhagen conference gives an opportunity for developing countries to bag large assistance for the development of alternative energy sources. Developed countries are bound to cut emissions because they alone emit over 80% of GHG. They need to invest a significant amount to cut down carbon emissions on the planet. This assistance will go to poor developing countries for the development of clean energy sources. Nepal has to do a lot of homework that can provide opportunity to take advantage from the forth coming climate change conference.
Nepal has various high potential sources of clean energy alternatives-biogas, photovoltaic (PV) and micro hydro. All of them are in use and practice. Biogas is the most popular in the rural areas of the country since past several decades. A total of 156575 biogas plants have already been installed in the rural areas till 2005. Similarly, photovoltaic, a solar home system based on the solar power is in use in the rural areas of the country since last decade. Till June 2009, 91947 households of the rural areas of the country have installed solar home system cells with the combined capacity of 2175 kw. The former provides energy for cooking as well as lighting while the latter is used for lighting purposes. Micro hydro is another source of clean energy with immense potentiality. Likewise, mini greed electrification program has served 11279 households by providing electricity with installed capacity of 1133 kw. Micro hydro provides sufficient energy for a typical village with large variations on end use. With the installation of micro hydro for a target community will provide power not only for lighting, cooking, charging of various appliances such as mobile, computer, TV etc but also helps to operate small scale industries in the local level to increase the economic activities thereby increasing the earning of the poor people. It is roughly estimated that 7% of rural population have been electrified through both the mini grid and PV system.
The efforts that Nepal has been putting to develop renewable sources of energy gradually are improving. But the pace of development is very slow. This is because of poverty that limits the capacity of the majority of people to afford necessary expenses to install. They need financial as well as technical assistance. To get this, Copenhagen climate change conference will be the platform. A clear and well envisioned plan for the development of clean energy through biogas, PV and micro hydro system as Nepal has their immense potentiality, is needed to convince international community. Nepal will get a number of environmental, economic and social benefits from the development of these renewable energy sources. Nepal also can bag a large amount of money by selling carbon under the CDM program if these resources are well utilized. A lot of scarce resources can be saved that otherwise are heavily invested in importing fossil fuel. In spite of this, the campaign against the excess creation of GHG emissions in the atmosphere to save the planet from the global warming would come true for the world community if developed countries invest a significant portion of their GDP to develop renewable energy sources of developing countries.
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