- Millions across India and billions across the world still rely on traditional stoves and solid fuels for cooking, which adds to the global climate crisis.
- Despite the promise of better health and environmental benefits, the adoption and use of improved cookstoves remains disappointingly low, finds a new study.
- The researchers advocate improving supply chains, targeting the poor and marginalised and providing price discounts to encourage the use of improved cookstoves.
- These measures can increase purchase and adoption of improved cookstoves by as much as 50 percent in rural India, the study has found.
Billions of people around the world rely on traditional cookstoves and solid fuels, which adds to the global climate crisis due to increased carbon emissions, besides impacting household health. A recent study has found that addressing supply chain issues and facilitating price discounts can dramatically improve the adoption of improved cookstoves.
Government records show that around 100 million of the total 240 million households in India are deprived of LPG, increasing the use of firewood, coal and dung cakes as the primary source of cooking.
The smoke from burning such fuels causes household pollution and adversely affects the health of women and children, causing several respiratory diseases. Efforts of women and children to collect firewood is an added burden.
A new study by researchers from India and the United States states that three billion people around the world rely on traditional stoves. It describes the “triple burden” of this pattern of resource use: it “exacerbates the global climate crisis (via increased carbon emissions) and forest degradation/deforestation (via daily fuelwood collection), and exposes billions to toxic air pollution generated by dirty fuels.”
The widespread adoption of improved cookstoves, which use cleaner fuels or burn solid fuels more efficiently, may ease this triple burden and deliver “triple wins” by improving household health, local environments, and global climate.
However, despite the promise of better health and environmental benefits, the adoption and use of improved cookstoves remain disappointingly low, finds the study. Poor households in rural settings will rarely pay for, or use, these new stoves.
The study advocates the adoption of practices like upgrading the supply chain, careful market analysis and offering price rebates, which can increase purchase and adoption of improved cookstoves by as much as 50 percent in rural India.
Read more: Crackdown on dirty household fuels can save lives
The study, conducted in three phases over a period of five years, involved nearly 1,000 households in the Indian Himalayan region. It included control households where typical practices of a local supplier – a combination of delivery, retail, marketing, sales, and finance – were mimicked, and intervention households, where options like price rebates and improved supply chains were implemented.
More than half the intervention households, where options like rebates on improved cookstoves were offered bought improved cookstoves, as against zero purchase in control villages.
Demand was higher for electric stoves as compared to improved biomass cookstoves by a factor of two, as the survey households liked the lack of smoke, speed of cooking, portability and attractiveness of the stove.
“This preference for electric stoves highlighted the lack of a steady source of electricity. In India, rural electrification rates have been rising rapidly, growing from 57 to 83 percent between 2005 and 2015,” note the authors in a press release.
The efficiency of the supply chain was another crucial factor. Even with a negligible price discount, improved supply chains “induced a 28 percentage-point increase in improved cookstove ownership,” said the study.
S.K. Pattanayak from the U.S.-based Sanford School of Public Policy of Duke University said that the main constraints for people shifting to improved cookstoves are “lack of information, insufficient income and inability to relate to environmental/climate issues.”
Price is a critical factor
In May 2016, the National Democratic Alliance government had launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) that aimed at providing 50 million LPG connections to below poverty line families with a support of Rs. 1,600 per connection over three years (by 2019). The target was later revised to 80 million connections by 2020.
Though the scheme has received a lot of appreciation, reports have repeatedly highlighted that refilling of cylinders is a huge issue due to the high price. In fact, to address this, the government was even considering to launch a scheme on solar cookers for the marginalised communities.
S.K. Pattanayak, who is also the lead author of the study, told Mongabay-India that price is a critical factor. “Price is a major issue not just for initial adoption (getting LPG connection, buying the new stoves), but also for sustained use – refilling the cylinders and maintaining the stoves. There are no easy answers, but for sure the policy response of just an initial boost/subsidy is not enough. It has to last beyond that initial adoption – more technical help, and some financial help,” said Pattanayak.
Asked if some kind of incentive or subsidy is required to push the large-scale adoption, he replied in the affirmative. “Large scale adoption serves greater societal good by avoiding all kinds of terrible environmental and health outcomes and we will definitely need subsidies,” he said. “Many poor, who most need to change behaviours are least likely to be able to change behaviours. So they need some help. The risk is that the middle class or upper class in villages will grab the subsidy – so targeting and indexing will be key. Critically, the government in India has gotten better at it, and so we should be able to succeed,” Pattanayak explained.
According to Indian government’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, as on June 19, 2019, the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) have released more than 72.3 million (7.23 crore) new LPG connections under the PMUY.
“OMCs have reported that till May 2019, 16.7 million (1.67 crore) and 14.5 million (1.45 crore) PMUY beneficiaries have purchased the refilled LPG cylinders four and five times respectively. OMCs have also reported that nearly 86 percent of PMUY beneficiaries who are at least one year old have returned for the second refill,” Pradhan told the Indian parliament while replying to a query on June 24, 2019.
The petroleum minister emphasised that adoption and use of LPG on a sustained basis by a beneficiary of PMUY involve behavioural change. “The use of LPG by PMUY beneficiary household depends on several factors which include food habits, cooking habits, price of LPG, availability of free firewood and cow dung,” said Pradhan.
Read more: A long road to clean energy for rural women in Chhattisgarh
Switching to LPG for habitat recovery and wildlife conservation
Experts agreed that what is needed is a behavioural change and emphasised that a concerted and customised outreach programme is the need of the hour.
“What is required is focussed advocacy and outreach programme centred around health exposures and increased health and economic risks for families. This is needed to encourage people to shift and continue to use clean fuels. The challenge of the ongoing programme is ensuring reliable and timeliness of refill and its continuous use,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based environment think-tank.
“At the end of the day, it is about economics. We need a more effective transfer of subsidy from the rich to the poor. But the campaign needs to address mixed fuel approach where families keep LPG for backup while using solid fuels which is very cheap or free. The campaign must also leverage health care services for the poor to promote awareness,” Roychowdhury told Mongabay-India.
CITATION:
Pattanayak, S. K., Jeuland, M., Lewis, J. J., Usmani, F., Brooks, N., Bhojvaid, V., … & Ramanathan, N. (2019). Experimental evidence on promotion of electric and improved biomass cookstoves. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201808827.
Banner image: Price is a critical factor in the large scale adoption of clean fuels. Photo by Thamizhpparithi Maari/Wikimedia Commons.
