More than half Nepal’s farmland lacks access to irrigation, a critical input for food production and food security. Lift irrigation, where water is pumped up from a lower water source, could be a powerful solution to irrigation needs, but requires energy. Local renewable energy is environmentally sustainable, and the most practical to run. But with the set-up costs often prohibitively expensive for many farmers, the Government of Nepal supports installations with subsidies and technical assistance.

The Government is committed to extending lift irrigation powered by renewables across Nepal and has budgeted USD 16 million in the fiscal year 2024/25, along with funding from international partners. To guide this investment, ICIMOD worked with Nepal’s Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) to co-develop a decision-making platform – Productive Use of Renewable Energy platform (PURE) – which consolidates data from multiple sources to estimate the potential area, cost and power-generation from RELI.

ICIMOD also provided technical support to AEPC to develop a GESI-responsive Detailed Feasibility Study (DFS) Framework to accurately select sites with the highest potential for irrigation. As a result of this support, AEPC adopted PURE to identify potential sites and mobilise funds to implement government-led projects. 

In 2024, AEPC used PURE to identify 48 potential RELI sites out of a possible 439 across three provinces in Nepal. ICIMOD is currently helping develop PURE further, and is rolling the platform out to Bhutan.