Abstract
•We develop an approach for analysing how energy systems respond to shock at a sub-national scale.•Nepal’s energy crises response influenced energy justice and energy poverty issues.•Nepal’s energy future has implications for energy resilience, energy poverty and energy justice concerns.
The way energy systems respond to shock is poorly understood at a subnational, subsystem scale. This research builds the concept of energy resilience to address this issue, by drawing on existing concepts in energy security, resilience and cultural theory literature. The concept of energy resilience is then used to investigate how Nepal’s energy systems responded to the 2015 earthquake and 2015–2016 blockade events which the country suffered. It is demonstrated that the way different actors within Nepal’s electricity and petroleum systems responded to these events had implications for energy poverty and energy justice issues. These results are then used to inform a discussion on the future of Nepal’s energy systems. It is argued that three axes of possibility for Nepal’s energy futures are emerging, which would see Nepal’s energy systems being pushed towards a centralised or distributed future, a regionally integrated or nationally isolated future, and a future based on fossil fuel or renewable energy sources. The combination of these energy possibilities that will emerge in Nepal are suggested to have further implications for energy resilience, energy poverty and energy justice in Nepal.