Nepal, Sept. 5 -- Energy insecurity is probably the quietest daily crisis Nepalis live with, second only to food. After all, many generations here grew up surrounded by energy scarcity, cooking with collected firewood, doing homework under dim candlelight during 18-hour-a-day load-shedding, and waiting endlessly outside of petrol pumps or Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) depots. The scarcity is embedded so deeply in our national mindset that whenever we survive a political or economic shock, the first question we ask is: "Will there be electricity, cooking gas or fuel to carry on with our lives?"

The chronic desperation was also recently captured when a video of people swimming into raging floodwaters to retrieve LPG cylinders that were floati...