Diggaj Niraula

M.Sc. Renewable Energy Engineering, Pulchowk Campus. I work on how carbon pricing behaves when the fuel base underneath it is still moving.

Kathmandu27.7172° N 85.3240° E

Local--:--:-- NPT +05:45

Ridge scan000%

Diggaj Niraula — Pulchowk Campus, Lalitpur

Who is writing

I grew up in a country that generates almost all of its electricity from moving water, and still spends a large share of its foreign currency importing fuel to cook with and drive on. That gap is the thing I keep coming back to.

My work sits between energy systems modelling and fiscal policy. A carbon tax is usually designed as if the fuel mix were fixed. In Nepal it is not: households are moving off biomass, the transport fleet is beginning to electrify, and the same tax rate produces a very different outcome in 2030 than it does today. I build models that let the base move.

Outside the modelling I do field assessment, technical writing, and the unglamorous work of getting data out of institutions that were not expecting to be asked for it.

Based in: Kathmandu, Nepal
Reading: Energy economics, fiscal incidence
Working in: Python, LEAP, OSeMOSYS, Excel
Languages: Nepali, English, Hindi

Nepal’s grid runs on water.
Its kitchens and its roads still run on carbon.

Research

Model output: carbon tax revenue against a shifting fuel base

Carbon taxation on a moving fuel base

Proposed under the DAAD Hi‑Nepal exchange between the Center for Energy Studies, IOE and the Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics, TH Köln.

Standard carbon-tax analysis assumes the taxed basket stays roughly where it is. Nepal’s does not. The same instrument has to be evaluated against household fuel switching, transport electrification, and an electricity system that is already close to zero-carbon — which means the revenue base erodes exactly as the policy succeeds.

The work models that erosion explicitly, and asks what a rate schedule has to look like if it is meant to stay fiscally coherent for fifteen years rather than three.

Energy systems modelling

Scenario construction for Nepal’s demand side — cooking, transport, and industrial heat.
Fiscal design for the transition

Where carbon revenue lands, who carries it, and what happens to it when the base shrinks.
Access and appliance uptake

What actually moves a household off biomass, once the connection already exists.

Selected work

Demand-side scenario model, 2025

A bottom-up model of Nepali household energy demand out to 2045, built to test how fast cooking-fuel substitution can plausibly move.

Python, LEAP, survey microdata

Solar PV feasibility assessment

Site survey, yield estimate and payback analysis for an institutional rooftop installation in the Kathmandu valley.

PVsyst, field survey, financial modelling

Fuel import exposure dashboard

Ten years of petroleum import volume and value against the hydro build-out, assembled from public NOC and NEA reporting.

pandas, data cleaning, visualisation

Path

2026

Exchange semester — ITT, TH Köln

DAAD Hi‑Nepal programme, hosted by the Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics. [confirm status & dates]
2024–

M.Sc. Renewable Energy Engineering

Center for Energy Studies, Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk Campus, Tribhuvan University.
20XX

[Job title], [Organisation]

[One sentence on what you were responsible for and what changed because of it.]
20XX

B.E. [Discipline]

[Institution, university].