Nepal is one of the lowest energy consuming countries in the world. More than 85 percent of its total energy comes from traditional biomass energy such as forests, agricultural residues and by-products from crops. Due to increasing per capita energy consumption, natural resources are being depleted with heavy emission of GHGs in the atmosphere which is supposed to be the cause of global climate change. The main objective of the study was to study the current energy consumption practices, to estimate the particulate matters and carbon emission from the current practices and to recommend the most suitable renewable energy technologies. The field work was based on primary and secondary data with design methodology were used. Firewood burning was found to be the major sources of energy used for cooking purposes in the Samagaun. The use of this traditional fuel leads to the different environmental issues like deforestation, indoor air pollution and ultimately affecting on human health.
From the results, we can say that traditional cooking stove (TCS) user is found to be in dominant number then improve cooking stove (ICS) user. The total amount of firewood used per day by TCS users are 2135kg/day whereas ICS users are 349kg/day. The average amount of firewood consumed by traditional and improve cooking stove user per day is 62.79 kg and 43.63kg respectively. The per capita/year firewood consumption of TCS and ICS user are 4401.9kg/per person/year and 3266.7 kg/per person/ year respectively. The calculation shows that per capita firewood consumption for TCS user is 1.3 times more than ICS user. The per capita/year carbon emission of TCS and ICS user is 8055.47 kg CO2e per capita/year and 5978.15kg CO2e per capita/year correspondingly. This calculation shows that ICS emits 1.3 times less CO2 in the atmospheric environment than the TCS. And the average mean particulate concentration at normal atm. condition for traditional cooking stove was found to be 2866μg/Nm3 and for improved cooking stove it was found to be 1333μg/Nm3 both of which far exceed the national standard of 230μg/m3TSP.
Based on the study, metallic improved cooking stove could be recommend as the best alternative energy technology in the study area.
