Enabling access to clean cooking energy is crucial to reducing the public health burden imposed by household air pollution. Through LPG subsidies and various programmes in support of improved cookstoves and biogas, the Government of India has been promoting access to clean cooking fuels and technologies for about five decades. Despite such efforts, a large section of the Indian population, particularly rural households, remains dependent on traditional biomass cookstoves for most of their cooking needs.

Over the last two years, through its flagship programme, PMUY, the government has taken an important step forward in enabling clean cooking energy access by making LPG connections available to millions of low-income households. It has also brought the issue into mainstream discussions, promoting an understanding of clean cooking energy among the masses that had perhaps till then only existed in the echo chambers of development professionals and policymakers.

However, as access to clean cooking energy is a multidimensional issue, it is not enough to merely adopt a countrywide strategy that focuses on a single fuel or benefit-transfer mechanism. The lack of energy access manifests in a variety of practical forms, including poor public health, high time poverty, inferior development opportunities for women and children, unequal rural development, and loss of critical biodiversity and natural resources. As a result, to fully address the issue in a manner that covers all potential threats arising from the lack of access, it is important to involve all concerned stakeholders in programme ideation and implementation, including the private sector, civil society, relevant government ministries and, above all, the households that are at the heart of the issue.

Energy access is multidimensional not just in its implications but also in its characteristics. Stakeholders who are working towards improving access to clean cooking energy must consider the health and safety, fuel availability, convenience, affordability, and quality associated with the use of the fuel or technology. To ensure that all these aspects are dealt with and that fuel stacking with traditional cookstoves is eliminated, we need a national strategy that is open to multiple fuels and is delivered by multiple stakeholders at the local, state, and national levels.

Since the vision of the Roadmap is to eliminate the use of cooking arrangements that cause HAP, the primary focus must be to ensure that the fuel stack of households is clean from an air-pollution perspective. Exposure to HAP must be brought within WHO-prescribed safe limits by increasing access to modern fuels and technologies and simultaneously improving ventilation in the cooking area of households. To ensure that the stack of fuels is entirely clean, there must be a focus on measuring and monitoring the sustained use of clean cooking energy solutions and on monitoring the discontinuation of traditional cookstoves. To fully eliminate exposure to HAP, it is important as well to address the practice of heating homes using traditional biomass.

It is also important to consider and communicate the complementary roles that these solutions play in unlocking access to clean cooking energy. Furthermore, there is a need to prioritise action for each fuel and technology, based on its current level of maturity (in terms of penetration, user acceptance, technology development, etc.). For instance, before it is deployed widely, the ICS ecosystem needs support in terms of technology innovations to improve its durability, convenience, and emissions performance. Additionally, in order to scale up biogas, there is a need to pilot and strengthen business models to reduce the effort required of households in operating and maintaining the plants, and to offer training in effective plant-management practices. In stark contrast to both ICS and biogas, the strategies for LPG need to focus more on improving availability in rural areas and allowing for flexible payment schedules. There is also a need to leverage the DBT platform to transition from the current uniform subsidy model to one that is context based and is tailored to households’ affordability. Emerging alternatives such as solar- and electricity-based cooking need investments in technology development as well as ecosystem-building support. Finally, the promotion of these solutions should be based on the local context, planned at the district and state level, and should consider local needs, geographical factors, available natural resources, and prevailing socio-economic and cultural conditions.

A multi-fuel, multi-stakeholder, and multipronged national strategy that considers not only the supply side, but also the needs, aspirations, and priorities of consumers will ensure a sustainable transition towards clean and affordable cooking energy access for all.