Although India’s Ujjwala programme has encouraged adoption of modern cooking gas, households have not shifted away from using highly polluting solid fuels. Additional incentives to encourage regular use of cooking gas are necessary to enable a more rapid and complete transition to clean cooking fuel among poor rural households.
Messages for Policy
Capital cost subsidies are necessary for LPG adoption but not sufficient to motivate regular LPG use in low-income rural families. Additional policy instruments to promote LPG use are needed.
Any new policy instruments (financial incentives, behaviour change communications, and so on) for PMUY beneficiaries should also be extended to general rural LPG consumers who do not use LPG regularly.
LPG sales records can be leveraged beyond accounting purposes to conduct valuable large-scale impact evaluations. The research community would benefit greatly from the availability of anonymized sales datasets.
Additional policy instruments to promote LPG should be tested using experiments and randomized controlled trials that account for consumer purchase history and the potential effects of seasonality.
India’s initiatives to extend its supply infrastructure and computerized sales record system should be used as learning opportunities for other countries expanding access to clean cooking.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Further Reading
Goldemberg, J., Martinez-Gomez, J., Sagar, A. & Smith, K. R. Household air pollution, health, and climate change: Cleaning the air. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 030201 (2018). An overview of clean cooking benefits.
Jain, A. et al. Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity: Survey of States 2018 (Council on Energy, Environment and Water, 2018); https://www.ceew.in/publications/access-clean-cooking-energy-and-electricity-survey-states. Largest survey of clean cooking practices in India.
Harish, S. and Smith, K. R. (eds) Ujjwala 2.0: From Access to Sustained Usage Policy Brief CCAPC/2019/03 (Collaborative Clean Air Policy Centre, 2019; https://ccapc.org.in/s/CCAPC-Ujjwala-V20-Aug-2019-9cm8.pdf Policy recommendations to promote sustained LPG use in India.
Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Report no. 14 of 2019 (Union Government (Commercial) Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, 2019); https://cag.gov.in/sites/default/files/audit_report_files/Report_No_14_of_2019_Performance_Audit_of_Pradhan_Mantri_Ujjwala_Yojana_Ministry_of_Petroleum_and_Natural_Gas_0.pdf Audit of PMUY at the national level.
Acknowledgements
This article was developed under Assistance Agreement no. 83542102 awarded by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to R.B. (sub-award to H.Z.). The EPA has not formally reviewed it. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication. Part of the research was developed by A.K. during his time in the Young Scientists Summer Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria, with financial support from the German National Member Organization. A.K. and H.Z. acknowledge support from the Wall Solutions Initiative provided by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, the ‘Collaborative Research and Training Experience Atmospheric Aerosol Program’ (CREATE-AAP) at the University of British Columbia, and the Clean Cooking Alliance (United Nations Foundation).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kar, A., Pachauri, S., Bailis, R. et al. Capital cost subsidies through India’s Ujjwala cooking gas programme promote rapid adoption of liquefied petroleum gas but not regular use. Nat Energy 5, 125–126 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0536-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0536-6
This article is cited by
-
Data are key to proving green-energy benefits
Nature (2022)
-
Sustained LPG use requires progress on broader development outcomes
Nature Energy (2020)
-
Differences in firewood users’ and LPG users’ perceived relationships between cooking fuels and women’s multidimensional well-being in rural India
Nature Energy (2020)