Capital cost subsidies through India’s Ujjwala cooking gas programme promote rapid adoption of liquefied petroleum gas but not regular use

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.