India’s Clean Energy Access

Globally, provisioning of universal energy access is one of the biggest challenges facing modern society. Adoption of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG7, has squarely brought it to the centre of the development discourse. Indeed, SDG7 is intrinsically linked to several other SDGs, particularly those dealing with gender equality, health and wellbeing, quality education, and climate action, to name a few.  Rural electrification has been a goal that India had been pursuing for long as part of its own development agenda, even before the advent of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and thereafter, SDGs. Earlier too there were schemes like `Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY)’ and Decentralized Distributed Generation within it. To increase the coverage of LPG in rural areas, a beginning was made with the launch of Rajiv Gandhi Gramin LPG Vitaran (RGGLV) scheme in 2009 to establish LPG supply chain in rural areas.

However, it was in recent years that this really picked up pace after such programmes were taken up in mission mode, in a goal-oriented manner accompanied by real-time monitoring mechanisms. A common thread among these energy access programmes was a sense of urgency. The Indian government worked rigorously in providing all households universal access to cleaner energy; be it the `Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY)’ for rural electrification or `24x7 Power to All’ or `Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)’ for providing LPG connections to 50 million below poverty line households.

As far as rural electricity access is concerned, a major forward shift took place when the ambit of rural electrification was widened from village level to household level under the `SAUBHAGYA’ scheme. The Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (SAUBHAGYA) was launched on September 25, 2017 with an aim to provide last-mile connectivity and electricity connections to all un-electrified households in rural areas by December 2018. For very remote and inaccessible areas, SAUBHAGYA also had a provision for 200-300 Watt solar power packs with batteries. The key highlight of this scheme was the fact that the Central and state governments, along with all the distribution utilities, worked in tandem to ensure that targets were met in time. Presently 99.99% of households have been electrified.

The Ujjwala scheme was launched on May 1, 2016 with an aim to provide 50 million LPG connections to below poverty line families in the following three years. It was later expanded to cover all poor households. The main objective of Ujjwala is to ensure that women and children are not subjected to household air pollution arising out of the fumes released by biomass cookstoves traditionally employed in rural homes. Also, to empower the women, their household LPG connections are registered in their names. While oil marketing companies (OMC) provided free LPG connections to the beneficiaries through the Central government’s support, the gas stove and first LPG cylinder were to be procured by the beneficiaries themselves, albeit with payments in monthly instalments. The instalments are to be recovered by OMCs from the subsidy amount due to the consumer on each LPG refill. As per Census 2011, of over 240 million households, 100 million rely on traditional solid biomass like firewood and dung cakes etc. for cooking. Of these 100 million households, LPG connection had already been provided to over 75 million households by July 30, 2019.

While the intensive policy push has helped make universal access to clean energy a reality in the country; the sustained efforts need to continue. It is true that electricity and LPG connections have reached the last mile to a large extent. The task now is to ensure that these households also get reliable 24x7 electricity supply. The ground realities about LPG being put to regular use are more complex and essentially are a mix of economics and socio-cultural practices. On one hand, affordability of LPG refills even after government subsidy is an issue; more so if viewed against fuelwood that is readily available at no monetary cost in many cases. There is also the challenge for LPG to be adopted as a preferred cooking option that many a times is determined more by cultural beliefs than anything else. Considering the economic strata of this section of population, addressing the affordability conundrum becomes a priority. Perhaps the solution lies in an integrated, intelligent, and interactive network combining centralized and decentralized electricity systems and disruptive technologies in solar cooking.