On Nepal's Trishuli River, 70 kilometers northwest of the capital Kathmandu, stands a beacon of hope for one of the poorest countries in the world. The water that once lay dormant as snow and ice in the Tibetan plateau, as meltwater flowed down the Himalayas and powered three turbines at the Devighat Hydropower Station, was generating electricity for India until the middle of last week. Three years ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to purchase 10,000 megawatts of electricity from the neighboring country over the next ten years - which caused his counterparts there to celebrate that with this "milestone" Nepal was finally realizing its seventy-year-old "dream of prosperity" through hydropower.
In fact, Nepal, the country of eight 8,000-meter peaks and 6,000 rivers, could theoretically generate 83,000 megawatts of power from hydroelectric power plants, which could supply all of South Asia with electricity. But even of the economically usable amount, which consists of around half of this capacity, only eight percent is currently on the grid as installed capacity.
Instead of supplying electricity to India, Nepal now has to import electricity
However, since the devastating flood disaster on the morning of August 26th, it is not only the Devighat power plant that has stopped working. Eleven systems have taken the water masses off the grid. The Rasuwagadhi power plant was completely washed away. Suddenly the country is missing twelve percent of its electricity generation capacity. Nepal can no longer supply its customer India. Instead, it asked its neighbors for electricity so that the lights don't go out in many places in Nepal.
The death toll from floods near Nepal's border with China topped 1,000 on Tuesday and will continue to rise. Almost 4,000 people are still missing. The economic shock that is only slowly becoming apparent behind the humanitarian catastrophe cannot yet be measured in numbers. Initial estimates from the Nepalese government put the cost at four to five billion dollars, which represents a tenth of annual economic output. In fact, however, the masses of water could also have shaken the country's plan to finally climb out of poverty by generating and exporting electricity.
Nepal has been dreaming of hydroelectricity since the 1950s
Wedged between the two economic giants China, where people earn nine times as much per capita, and India, which is twice as rich, Nepal is still dependent on tourism and agriculture, primarily on its migrant workers who have migrated abroad. For example, they transfer part of their salary home from the Gulf countries, where it accounts for almost a third of the total gross domestic product. The many dollars enable the country to import seven times as much as it exports, which has resulted in Nepal not having developed a single competitive industry to date.
The country has been dreaming of generating electricity through hydropower since the 1950s. But while water flowed in abundance down the steep slopes, there was a lack of capital and political will to build power plants, tunnels and networks as well as a foreign market for Nepal's electricity - because its neighbor India did not want one politically.
After all, the money for expanding hydropower in the country, which has slightly more inhabitants than Shanghai and around a twentieth of its economic output, would have come primarily from China, with which India is at loggerheads in the Himalayas. Since the Indian economy has been growing rapidly and India's emissions are set to fall at the same time, India has suddenly become interested in climate-friendly electricity from Nepal - and is now investing heavily in its hydropower industry.
In one fell swoop, a quarter of the electricity generation capacity is lost
The question is whether it can now simply be expanded further as planned, since last Wednesday morning at 8:37 a.m. a brown avalanche of water, boulders, ice, tree trunks and mud raced across the Lhende Khola into the Bhotekoshi further into the Trishuli, causing the river level to rise by nine meters within half an hour and burying roads, bridges, schools and entire villages as well as the hydroelectric power plants. The first experts have already spoken out and warned of the risk that the next flood disaster with thousands of deaths could occur in the not too distant future if Nepal continues to expand its hydropower as before.
If you include those power plants that were not yet connected to the grid, Nepal has lost a quarter of its electricity generation capacity since the flood. The Upper Trishuli 1 project alone, a run-of-river power plant under construction with 216 megawatts of output, which upon completion should generate around 1500 gigawatt hours, almost 15 times as much electricity as the Devighat plant that produces for India, is 90 percent destroyed. Nearly 600 people are missing at the site since the flood, stuck in the tunnels if they have not yet died.
The warning that floods could damage the power plants went unheard
This plant, one of the largest in Nepal, was also intended to supply electricity for India and is financed, among other things, by loans from international development banks such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank. Documents for the $650 million project said the power plant could withstand a “10,000-year flood.” A “climate change risk assessment” commissioned by the ADB concluded that “the risks of climate change impacts on the project are low” – even if there was “damage to some project facilities under construction” on the Trishuli River in 2025 due to glacial lake blockades. An independent expert advisory board called for a review of climate resilience, which has not yet happened.
The future looks “challenging” for his home country, writes Nepalese Puspa Sharma of the Singapore Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) in a new article in which he calls the disaster a “warning to the world” about the consequences of climate change. The deadly flood is “alarming” for the development of Nepal’s hydropower industry. The fact that the country suddenly lost a large part of its electricity generation capacity shows the vulnerability of an energy system that is heavily oriented towards mountain rivers. With average temperatures rising in the Himalayas, which are warming much faster than the global average, Nepal must approach hydropower development "carefully" and assess all concerns for risks, no matter who raises them.
A pious wish. Three weeks before the most recent flood disaster in Nepal, a group of experts led by the Austrian geoscientist Jakob Steiner published a study that examined the consequences of a smaller flood a year ago in the Himalayas, in which 28 people died. After several hydroelectric power plants were damaged, eight percent of the electricity generation capacity was lost. The experts' warning reads like a blueprint for the current, much larger catastrophe: Nepal has concentrated too many power plants, power grids and roads in a few narrow Himalayan corridors that are at risk from climate change. A single, extreme event could trigger a chain reaction that would result in enormous costs and loss of revenue.
In addition to the floods, economist Sharma from Singapore sees another risk that could destroy his homeland's dream of wealth through green electricity: that the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting so quickly that there is no longer any water for hydropower.
