Nepal is often described as hydropower-rich but economy-poor. That description no longer reflects current realities. Nepal is not short of natural resources, generation potential, or even electricity capacity. What it lacks is a clear and coordinated strategy to convert clean electricity into sustained economic value. The core challenge today is not generation, rather utilisation. Over the last decade, Nepal has made a decisive shift in its power sector. Installed electricity capacity has crossed 3,800 megawatts, and the country has largely eliminated chronic load shedding. Government planning documents project capacity expansion to around 28,500 megawatts by the mid-2030s, primarily from hydropower with growing solar integration. However, surplus electricity alone does not create prosperity. When electricity is treated merely as an export commodity, Nepal risks locking itself into a low-value role – selling power while continuing to import fuel, machinery, technology, and services. Such an approach may generate short-term revenue, but it fails to build productive capacity or drive structural economic transformation. Nepal's opportunity lies in domestic value creation. According to the World Bank, Nepal's GDP in 2024 stood at approximately US$ 43 billion. In an economy of this size, even US$ 2 to 3 billion of stable annual value added would significantly affect growth rates, fiscal capacity, and employment outcomes. Electricity has the potential to enable that scale of impact, but only if it is used as an economic input rather than treated purely as a tradable output. Recent electricity trade figures show that Nepal is beginning to turn its clean-energy potential into real economic activity, but the gains remain modest relative to overall economic size. In fiscal year 2023/24, Nepal became a net exporter of electricity, selling slightly more power than it imported, with exports of about 1.946 billion kilowatt-hours compared to imports of about 1.834 billion units, according to Nepal Electricity Authority data. The value of exported power was roughly Rs 17.1 billion against about Rs 16.9 billion of imports, illustrating that the country has crossed the threshold into net trade surplus in electricity. Nepal has also begun exporting electricity to Bangladesh through India's grid under a tripartite agreement, supplying around 40 megawatts of hydroelectricity in the first stage of cross-border trade. These developments demonstrate Nepal's ability to engage in regional energy markets, but they also underline the narrow economic margins of an export-only approach when compared with the broader possibilities of using electricity to spur domestic industry, services, and infrastructure growth. Nepal's long-term power sector plans point to a generation target of around 28,500 megawatts as sufficient to meet rising domestic demand while supporting electricity exports. Independent studies and government assessments also suggest that Nepal's technically and economically feasible hydropower potential is closer to 40 megawatts. Looking at this perspective from a different perspective, discussion of higher capacity over the long run is not about setting new targets, but about understanding scale. Once electricity availability reaches such levels, the central economic question shifts from how much power Nepal can export to how effectively that power can be absorbed within the domestic economy. Electrified transport, industry, digital infrastructure, and services then become the real drivers of value. At scale, electricity stops being just a sector and starts functioning as a macroeconomic force, shaping growth, employment, and external balances far beyond the power industry itself. As a landlocked country with high transport costs, Nepal is structurally disadvantaged in logistics-intensive manufacturing. Competing with large coastal economies in scale-based industry is neither efficient nor realistic. Nepal's comparative advantage lies in sectors where electricity reliability matters more than physical logistics. These are industries where value is generated through services, data processing, and precision operations rather than mass movement of goods. This is where global trends become relevant. Countries with reliable and affordable electricity are increasingly treating power as a platform for digital and service-based industries rather than only as a household utility or export commodity. In South Asia itself, policy discussions in hydropower-rich and energy-constrained economies alike reflect this shift towards allocating electricity to high-value, power-intensive services such as digital infrastructure and advanced computing. These examples are not models to replicate. They simply illustrate a broader change in economic thinking, where electricity is viewed as a strategic input for value creation rather than a product. Digital infrastructure is Nepal's most viable entry point: data centres, cloud, e-governance, and digital finance are power-intensive, location-light, and benefit from cool climates. Growing broadband investments show capital interest; real value comes from building a domestic digital services ecosystem supporting finance, telecom, government, and regional enterprises. Electric mobility offers another verified economic lever. Nepal's petroleum imports remain one of the largest contributors to the trade deficit. Electrifying transport shifts expenditure from imported fuel to domestically generated electricity. This directly improves the balance of payments, reduces exposure to global oil price volatility, and keeps more spending within the domestic economy. The macroeconomic logic of electric mobility is therefore fiscal and monetary, not only environmental. Productive electrification in agriculture and industry drives jobs, value addition, and GDP, but Nepal must integrate energy with industrial, financial, and skills policies to build power-based ecosystems. The state must set frameworks: align power, finance, skills, regulation, and planning to enable electricity-driven industries and long-term economic value. Hydropower should therefore be a platform reducing fuel imports, creating skilled jobs, strengthening finances, enabling Nepal's clean energy-based service and technology economy. Nepal's future depends not on exporting megawatts, but on using electricity intelligently to build value, industries, and sustainable prosperity. Bhattarai is CEO of Himalayan Energy Ltd.