Nepal information
Environment
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Grafik Nepal's Environment
Electric solution to Nepalese pollution
Kopan Monastery's shift to solar electricity
Nepal Electro Bus Project for Clean Air
Outlook for Environment in Kathmandu Valley
Grafik
Kathmandu's Air Pollution
Electric solution to Nepalese pollution
Electric three-wheeler
In South Asia, cooking fuel like paraffin is subsidised so the poor can afford it, but it often finds its way into the market-priced petrol so an unscrupulous dealer can make more money.

Electric vehicles are a common sight on the streets of Kathmandu Paraffin isn't meant to be burned in car engines and it causes noxious black smoke.

Diesel, too, is also widely used by buses in Kathmandu and the fumes from all those poisons spewing into the air have produced statistics for respiratory disease worse than a smokers' ward at a cancer hospital.
Some people living by the side of the busy Kathmandu ring road, often are suffering horrible coughs from breathing exhaust fumes.
An American who was living in Kathmandu for 40 years of his life - who often commutes by bicycle - was recently told by his doctor to give up smoking.
The American had never even puffed on a cigarette. An American engineer, married to a Nepali, has thrown all his effort into making electric vehicles the norm here.
He has some success, a fleet of locally designed, battery powered, three wheel rickshaws carry thousands of passengers around the city every day.

But the engineer's electric milk float-based buses remain very much on the drawing board because of Nepali Government inertia.

Governement blamed for protecting privileges

Approval for his project remains perennially stalled at the so called Ministry for Protection of the Environment, which largely seems to me to see its job as protecting the privileges of diesel vehicle importers.

The American engineer is not giving up though, he has come up with a scheme to manufacture the bus chassis's here in Nepal at the country's only indigenous car company

Information
Kathmandu Valley
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