Nepal explores tapping flood-risk glacial lakes for clean power

High-altitude villages in the Himalayas are using drained glacial lakes to generate clean hydropower for their energy needs.

High in the Himalayas, two villages near Nepal’s border with Tibet are getting power from an unusual source: a threatening glacial lake.

In this high-altitude region, climate change is accelerating the melting of mountain ice, with villages located below fast-filling glacial lakes facing a risk of catastrophic flooding.

But efforts to drain some of the excess water building up in the lakes, to lower disaster risk, also present an opportunity to boost clean power production, by installing small hydropower generators in the drainage channels.

Since 2017, 175 households in Langtang and Kyanjin, two villages in the high Kyanjin Valley, have been able to tap clean hydropower from efforts to drain the Kyanjin glacial lake for cooking, lights and other energy needs.

“We used to go three hours away from here to collect firewood” - something hard to find above the tree line, said 48-year-old Pasang Tamang, who runs a hotel in Kyanjin, a popular stopping point for tourists trekking in the mountains. “Now we have electricity to cook food and boil water,” she said.

The hydropower project, which cost $448,000, was paid for by the Hong Kong-based Kadoorie Charitable Foundation.

But expanding such smart solutions - which unusually cut both disaster risk and climate changing emissions - is proving challenging in Nepal with funding limited and work in high-mountain environments challenging and often costly.