The impact of an improvement in the quality and reliability of rural residential electricity supply on clean cooking fuel adoption: Evidence from six energy poor Indian states

Abstract

We present the first evidence of the causal effect of the quality and reliability of residential electricity supply on clean cooking fuel adoption and use in rural areas of six energy poor Indian states using household-level panel data from 2015 and 2018. Quality and reliability of electricity are measured using the number of hours of electricity supply in a day, the number of days of low voltage and the number of complete power outage days experienced in a month. We used the village-level variation in the coverage of a nationwide government program, (i.e., the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)), that aimed to improve the quality and reliability of rural residential electricity supply, as an instrument. Our results show a positive effect of an improvement in the quality and reliability of electricity on liquefied petroleum gas adoption and use; and disadoption of traditional cooking fuel. The effects were significant for both poor and non-poor, and lower-caste households’ transition to clean cooking fuel. We find that the improvements in economic wellbeing, adoption of time-saving technologies, information access, and energy-efficient technology adoption played important mediating roles. These findings, for the first time, reveal the complementary role of electricity quality and reliability improvement with the adoption of clean energy sources, and thus supporting the achievement of important developmental outcomes. The findings thus underscore the need to invest in seamless and reliable electricity as a pathway to achieve the target of universal access to clean cooking fuels by 2030.