LPG as a clean cooking fuel: Adoption, use, and impact in rural India

Carlos F. Gould and Johannes Urpelainen

Energy Policy, 2018, vol. 122, issue C, 395-408

Abstract: Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is by far the most popular clean cooking fuel in rural India, but how rural households use it remains poorly understood. Using the 2014–2015 ACCESS survey with over 8500 households from six energy-poor Indian states, our study reports on results from a comprehensive survey of LPG use in rural India using a holistic approach to understanding the integration of a clean cooking fuel into rural household's energy mixes. There are three principal findings: (i) fuel costs are a critical obstacle to widespread adoption, (ii) fuel stacking is the prevailing norm as few households stop using firewood when adopting LPG, and (iii) both users and non-users have highly positive views of LPG as a convenient and clean cooking fuel. These findings show that expanding LPG use offers great promise in rural India, but affordability prevents a complete transition from traditional biomass to clean cooking fuels.

Keywords: India; Energy poverty; Clean cooking; Technology adoption; Sustained use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (68)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518304877
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:122:y:2018:i:c:p:395-408

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.07.042

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().