Policy Brief

Bundling Improved Cooking and Lighting Technology for Energy Access

08 Jun 2015
| Mr S Arun

There is no definitive understanding of what energy services are entailed in 'access to energy' for a household. The Global Tracking Framework of SE4All1 provides a comprehensive definition of energy access-positing that a household in the basic 'tier' of energy access has 'task lighting and phone charging' and a 'manufactured solid-fuel cookstove with conformity, convenience, and adequacy'. India has 75 million households without access to electricity.2 The situation with regard to cooking energy is more overwhelming-166 million households depend on solid fuels3 for their cooking needs.

Discussion Paper : Mainstreaming Gender in Improved Cookstove Value Chains

03 Jun 2015
| Mr S Arun

Lack of convenient, reliable, and affordable access to clean cookstoves risks the lives and livelihoods of millions of women in rural India. In the patriarchal rural society, cooking and collection of fuel are tasks typically performed by women (Dutta 2003). Household air pollution, primarily from inefficient cookstoves, leads to 1.04 million premature deaths in India annually (Balakrishnan, Cohen and Smith 2014), disproportionately affecting women and young children. Women spend a considerable amount of time, effort, and money collecting fuel wood (Sehjpal et al. 2014), which can otherwise be spent gainfully on productive activities.

Selecting the Appropriate Improved Cooking Technology: What Matters?

11 May 2015
| Mr S Arun

Improved biomass cookstoves projects are being prioritized, nationally and internationally, for development funding in India. While the Government of India’s National Biomass cookstoves Programme1 is the largest of its kind, there are many other national and regional improved cookstoves projects being implemented by multilateral and bilateral agencies. A review of cookstove projects reveals the poor state of adoption of improved biomass cooking technology2 and a multitude of inadequately understood factors that drive adoption.3 The type of improved biomass cookstove technology purchased by the households is recognized as a significant determinant of adoption.

Supply-side Financing of Improved Biomass Cookstoves in India

11 May 2015
| Mr S Arun

Even as India rapidly emerges as a global centre of technology development, around 780 million of its citizens are estimated to cook food on traditional stoves that burn solid fuels.1 Smoky as these cookstoves are, the household air pollution resulting from them is attributed to cause 1.04 million premature deaths annually, from cancer, respiratory problems, and other ailments.2 Currently, the dominant biomass energy technologies, for cooking in households, are traditional chulhas, i.e., mud stoves along with some cement and pottery or brick stoves, normally with no operating chimneys or hoods.

Can Subsidies be a Tool for Strengthening the Improved Cookstoves Market?

20 Apr 2015
| Mr S Arun

The Unnat Chulha Abhiyan (National Biomass Cookstoves Programme) has set an ambitious target of deploying 2.75 million improved biomass cookstoves in the 12th Five-Year Plan Period, with a plan outlay of `294 crores.1 One of the financial provisions of the programme is to subsidize up to 50 per cent of the cost of the stove2, with an additional 10 per cent of the total cost paid to masons for construction of earthen stoves. Subsidies have an undeniable role in supporting the nascent improved biomass cookstoves market, with majority of the buyers having low paying capacities.

Capacity Needs of Government Officials for Integration of Energy and Human Development

09 Apr 2015
| Mr S Arun

Achieving Sustainable Energy for all (SE4ALL) is one of the fundamental needs for attaining development goals while ensuring economic growth and safeguarding the environment. Access to energy is a necessary precondition for achieving many development goals that extend far beyond the energy sector-eradicating poverty, increasing food production, providing clean water, improving public health, enhancing education, creating economic opportunity, and empowering women. Despite this, ground realities are starkly different in India. Around 600 million Indians do not have access to electricity and about 700 million Indians use biomass as their primary energy source for cooking.

Tax Regime for Improved Cookstoves and Its Implications

14 Sep 2014
| Ms P R Krithika

Around 160 million households in India rely on traditional biomass - firewood, cattle dung, and crop residues as cooking fuel. When biomass is burnt in traditional inefficient cookstoves it emits smoke that has significant health and climate impacts resulting in 10 lakh premature deaths per year. Efforts to replace inefficient traditional cookstoves with cleaner, more efficient improved biomass cookstoves have been in process across the country for several years now, primarily driven by grassroots institutions and government technical institutes. One of the biggest hurdles inhibiting the uptake of improved (biomass) cookstoves (hereafter referred to as ICs) is price.

India's coal reserves are vastly overstated: is anyone listening?

04 Mar 2011
| Mr R K Batra

The policy brief deals exclusively with thermal coal and demolishes the myth that India has plenty of coal. The brief explains in detail why the coal that can be extracted is only a small fraction of our total coal inventories. If we remain in denial, we will not take the urgent and necessary steps to augment these reserves.

Cooking with cleaner fuels in India: a strategic analysis and assessment

07 Dec 2010
| Ms Meena Sehgal

The series 'Cooking with cleaner fuels in India: a strategic analysis and assessment' is a collection of four policy briefs that carry findings emanating from a joint research by TERI and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (with support from UNICEF) on healthy cooking fuel options for India. The briefs trace the usage of different fuels in rural and urban households, health implications of using less cleaner cooking fuels, and stakeholder partnerships of governments, funding agencies, industry and consumer groups to accelerate adoption of cleaner cooking fuels.