Energy Gardens for Small-Scale Farmers in Nepal Institutions, Species and Technology. Field Work Report

The Nepal Energy Garden forges new links across disciplines by integrating research on the institutional economics of energy and technology transfer with the knowledge of botanists and engineers. The objectives are fourfold: to investigate the institutional economics of energy biomass and biofuel production from local to national and global scales to undertake a technical assessment of resources and conversion routes to combine the institutional and technical analyses to devise ways for community cooperation on sustainable energy production to transfer the knowledge gained to a wide international audience. The energy garden concept originates from an idea developed by the Hassan Biofuels Park in India and will follow their approach for using local plant species as the source of biofuels, thereby avoiding loss of biodiversity as much as possible, and using marginal land to avoid competition with food crops. The project is a partnership of four organisations in Nepal and the Hassan Biofuels Park. The objectives will be achieved through a combination of policy analysis, reviews of plant species, analysis of technical options and field work in the villages. The aim is to test the feasibility of expanding the successful Energy Garden approach to Nepal and worldwide.