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Subsidizing connections to the poor

Nature Energy volume 4, pages 724–725 (2019)Cite this article

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India has distributed subsidized liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to the poor at a hitherto unseen pace. However, it has been unclear whether this successfully supports a shift away from solid fuel. Research now shows that connection subsidy alone is not enough to promote sustained LPG consumption among rural poor households.

Kar et al. use a dataset comprising more than 200,000 sales transaction records between January 2016 and December 2018 of more than 25,000 PMUY beneficiary consumers and general consumers (that is, consumers who own a connection not distributed under PMUY) from three LPG distributors in rural regions of Koppal district in the state of Karnataka. The researchers also use a national dataset of LPG consumption aggregated at the state level for analysing broad national trends under PMUY. It shows that almost a quarter of PMUY connections did not return for refills and 28% purchased five or more cylinders. The use of such sales data overcomes limitations of survey-based studies of self-reported consumption and of studies deploying thermal sensors. Self-reported consumption may not be actual consumption due to recall errors, non-response or inaccurate disclosure. By contrast, thermal sensors record actual consumption, but are typically installed in small samples because they are expensive to deploy and monitor over the required period of time, yielding results that may not be representative of the population.

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References

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  2. GBD MAPS Working Group Burden of Disease Attributable to Major Air Pollution Sources in India (Health Effects Institute, 2018).

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  5. Gupta, A. et al. rice https://riceinstitute.org/research/persistence-of-solid-fuel-use-despite-increases-in-lpg-ownership-new-survey-evidence-from-rural-north-india/ (29 March 2019).

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  1. Prayas (Energy Group), Pune, India

    Ashwini Dabadge

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  1. Ashwini Dabadge
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Correspondence to Ashwini Dabadge.

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Dabadge, A. Subsidizing connections to the poor. Nat Energy 4, 724–725 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0433-z

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