| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Nepalis face 16-hour daily power cuts by February |
| 2008-12-27 |
| KATHMANDU - Nepal’s crippling electricity shortage is set to worsen, with the Himalayan nation facing power cuts of 16 hours a day by mid-February, officials said on Friday, in a fresh blow to the Maoist-led government. Power generation has fallen because mountain snows are not melting fast enough in winter and river levels are low, hampering an economy which has not recovered from a decade-long civil war. The government has declared a national power emergency, which it expects to last up to five years, and the electricity authority said daily power cuts would increase to 12 hours from nine hours from next week, and to 16 hours from mid-February. “The situation will only worsen as we have no way to meet the demand,” senior Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) official Sher Singh Bhat said. Nepal’s many rivers cascading down from the Himalayas have the potential to generate up to 83,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, officials and experts say. But last week Bhat told Reuters the country generates only 336 MW of total capacity despite demand for 770 MW, which rises by 60 MW a year. The government said it would give a seven-year tax exemption to private companies producing hydroelectric power by 2012. It will also import electricity from India and install diesel-run generators in the next two months. Building expensive new power plants is politically sensitive in Nepal, one of the world’s poorest nations. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 You may think that this is another nail in the AGW coffin, but I tell you *it is not* and I blame Bush. |
| Posted by: KBK 2008-12-27 12:15 |
| #1 NOT too disimilar from CALIFORNIA reportedly ruing out of $$$ for normal Govt. operations come February or March 2009. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-12-27 00:48 |