Sustainable Energy Planning and Electrification for Urban Households: A Case Study of Neelakantha Municipality, Dhading, Nepal

Abstract

This study targets to perform the analysis of consumption of energy in the present situation in the residential sector of Neelakantha Municipality situated in Dhading District of Bagmati Province, Nepal. This study also performs the energy demand forecasting for the municipality from the year 2020 to the year of 2050. In this study, two basic scenarios are employed for analyzing the future energy demands in the household sector of Neelakantha Municipality namely: Business as Usual Scenario and Sustainable Development Scenario. The scenarios are developed and detailed analysis is performed in Low Emission Analysis Platfrom (LEAP) software. First of all, the detailed analysis for the current household energy situation of Neelakantha municipality is carried out through the sample survey in the households of the municipality. Among 14,524 households, a sample size of 101 households are selected which are divided proportionally according to the population of each ward. The study of the present situation shows that there is total energy consumption of 292 TJ per year in the household sector of Neelakantha Municipality which comprises 4.11 GJ per capita per year. The share of energy is seen to be for the cooking purpose which constitutes 67.3% in the total consumption. For the cooking purpose itself, the firewood constitutes 40.01% and LPG constitutes 39.13% share which are the most dominant sources for the municipality. The Business as Usual Scenario (BAU) shows that the demand of household energy will reach 13.48 GJ per capita per year in 2050 where the sum of firewood energy consumption for household will reach 47.25%. Similarly, the total consumption of LPG will reach 28.6%. The share of electricity covers only 22.44% of total energy consumption in 2050 with the per capita electricity consumption of 840.16 KWh annually. In the same way, the Sustainable Development Scenario (SUS) shows that with the interventions of the modern energy technologies, the total energy demand of households will reach only 7.48 GJ per capita in 2050. At that time, the major energy consumption will change to electricity which constitute 474 TJ of energy share out of 532 TJ which is approximately 89% of total consumption of energy. The electricity consumption reaches 1851.79 kWh per capita annually. The use of LPG and firewood will be diminished drastically by 2050 with the proper modification in the technologies used for different household purposes. The GHG emissions for both the scenario are also analyzed in this study. The study shows that the of GHG emissions will reach 17,994 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2050 which is 275 kg equivalent of CO2 per capita in Business as Usual Scenario. But for the Sustainable Development scenario, the GHG emission in cooking will be 19.2 tonnes of CO2 equivalent only with the replacement of cooking technologies with the cleaner technologies such as electric cookers with negligible emissions. It will reduce the emission by 62.82% in 2030 and 99.89% in 2050 from the values of emission in the Business as Usual Scenario. At last, the cumulative cost and benefit analysis is carried out for both the scenarios. Taking 6% as the social discounting rate for the net present value calculation, the cost benefit analysis up to the year 2050 is analyzed. For the Business as Usual scenario, the net present value of cost is calculated to be 14,290 million Nepali Rupees and that for the Sustainable Development scenarios is calculated to be 12,468 million Nepali Rupees, thus reducing the total cost by 1,822 Million Nepali rupees until 2050.