Nepal, July 13 -- or close to a decade, my work has taken me to the places where hydropower actually gets built, walking to huge concrete structures in a deep river valley.

I have argued with site managers about hard hats no inspector will ever check, spending afternoons with community leaders who want to know what happened to the fish. From those construction sites, the national conversation looks oddly narrow.

The story at conferences and seminars in Kathmandu is almost entirely about megawatts. It is a good and uplifting story, but it is also incomplete.

If Nepal means to be South Asia's source of clean energy, what is sold across the border must carry more than electrons. It must also carry credible proof that the electricity was ...