Moving Beyond Clean Cooking Energy adoption: Using Indian ACCESS panel data to understand solid fuel suspension

Abstract

Household solid fuel use has adverse impacts on health and the environment. The Indian government's Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) subsidy promoted the adoption of Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) by millions of Indian households. There is little knowledge, however, regarding decision-making to reduce solid fuel use after adopting cleaner fuels. Leveraging panel data on household energy use in rural India we jointly estimated LPG adoption and consumption to study the reduction in solid fuel use. Our results indicate that exclusive LPG use increased from 4.5% to 17.8% between 2015 and 2018 while fuel stacking (use of multiple fuels) doubled from 18% to 39%. The household's wealth index, self-reported higher social strata, business ownership, head of household's educational level, and the proportion of LPG-using households in the village were positively associated with LPG consumption and suspension of solid fuels. Distance to LPG refill delivery, household size and PMUY subsidy were negatively associated with LPG share though LPG share was positively associated with the interaction of PMUY with wealth index. Policy efforts should target sustained LPG consumption by making refill delivery more accessible and implementing a pro-poor refill subsidy as well as general poverty alleviation (e.g., by creating income generation opportunities).