Decision Dossier — Electric-Cooking Evidence Gate and Pilot
An evidence-led comparison of research, pilot and scale-up options for electric cooking; national adoption, feeder readiness, load timing, appliance costs and LPG fiscal effects remain incompletely measured.
- Page status
- Working page
- Updated
- 2026-07-19
- Last reviewed
- 2026-11-04
- Review due
- 2027-02-04
Decision Question
What evidence and pilot design would allow Nepal to test electric cooking without shifting unreliable service, appliance costs or peak demand risks onto households?
Established Facts
- World Bank Economics of Household Cooking Using Electricity in Nepal describes electricity use for cooking as below one percent of Nepali households and biomass as the primary cooking fuel for about 60 percent. It is a cost-economics study, not a programme evaluation or annual adoption series.
- The World Bank study finds electricity cheaper than fossil fuels on average in its modelled comparison. It does not establish current retail appliance prices, household financing terms, feeder reliability, cooking-hour load shapes or the outcome of a national programme.
- WECS Energy Sector Synopsis Report 2024 places grid electricity at 7.23 percent of final energy in FY 2079/80 and traditional biomass at 63.87 percent. These are economy-wide energy-balance shares, not electric-cooking adoption measures.
- NEA Annual Report FY 2024/25 reports 97.6 percent national grid coverage and 12.26 percent total system loss at its reporting cutoff. Grid coverage does not establish continuous, cooking-grade service at a household or feeder.
Unknowns
- A current annual series for electric-cooking adoption and continued use, including fuel stacking.
- Household cooking times and appliance load profiles by season, geography and income group.
- Feeder and transformer headroom, outage duration and voltage quality in candidate locations.
- Current induction-appliance prices, compatible cookware costs, repair access and household finance terms.
- Current LPG tax, price-support and subsidy incidence, including who would gain or lose from a policy change.
- Distributional effects for renters, low-income households and households that cannot rely on electricity at meal times.
Comparable Cases
No comparable implementation case is included in the current evidence set. The World Bank Nepal paper compares costs across cooking technologies, but it does not evaluate a municipal or national electric-cooking programme.
Transfer limitation: programme results from another country or from a short equipment-distribution pilot should not be transferred to Nepal without checking feeder reliability, tariff structure, cooking practices, appliance persistence and fuel stacking.
Response Options and Trade-offs
| Option | What it would involve | Potential advantage | Material limitation or risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build the evidence baseline first | Publish adoption, load-shape, appliance-market, LPG-fiscal and feeder-readiness evidence | Reduces the risk of designing around national averages that do not describe household service | Delays direct implementation and still requires access to utility and household data |
| Run a bounded local pilot after feeder screening | Select locations using service-quality evidence; test appliances, finance, tariffs and measured use | Produces Nepal-specific adoption, reliability and load evidence | Pilot results may not transfer nationally; selection can favour unusually strong feeders |
| Target existing reliable customers | Offer support only where household service and wiring meet defined thresholds | Lower initial grid risk and faster learning | Can exclude poorer or weakly served households and widen service inequality |
| Begin broad national support now | Offer a national appliance or tariff programme before local evidence is complete | Signals policy commitment and may accelerate uptake | Unknown peak effects, fiscal exposure, feeder constraints and sustained-use rates make benefits difficult to estimate |
TransparentGov Assessment
Preferred evidence-led sequence: publish the missing baseline, screen candidate feeders, and run a bounded pilot with pre-declared measures for reliability, sustained appliance use, fuel stacking, household cost and hourly demand. A national target or fiscal saving should follow measured results rather than substitute for them.
The assessment would change if Nepal publishes a current household adoption series, feeder-level reliability and capacity data, a cooking-load study, and a documented LPG fiscal ledger.
Monitoring Triggers
- A current national household energy-use survey with electric-cooking variables.
- Public feeder reliability or transformer-capacity data for candidate locations.
- A programme evaluation reporting sustained use, fuel stacking and household costs.
- A residential time-of-use tariff or metering decision with implementation evidence.
- A current official LPG price-support, tax and subsidy account.