Policy Brief
Supply-side Financing of Improved Biomass Cookstoves in India
11 May 2015
| Mr S Arun
Even as India rapidly emerges as a global centre of technology development, around 780 million of its citizens are estimated to cook food on traditional stoves that burn solid fuels.1 Smoky as these cookstoves are, the household air pollution resulting from them is attributed to cause 1.04 million premature deaths annually, from cancer, respiratory problems, and other ailments.2 Currently, the dominant biomass energy technologies, for cooking in households, are traditional chulhas, i.e., mud stoves along with some cement and pottery or brick stoves, normally with no operating chimneys or hoods.
Can Subsidies be a Tool for Strengthening the Improved Cookstoves Market?
20 Apr 2015
| Mr S Arun
The Unnat Chulha Abhiyan (National Biomass Cookstoves Programme) has set an ambitious target of deploying 2.75 million improved biomass cookstoves in the 12th Five-Year Plan Period, with a plan outlay of `294 crores.1 One of the financial provisions of the programme is to subsidize up to 50 per cent of the cost of the stove2, with an additional 10 per cent of the total cost paid to masons for construction of earthen stoves. Subsidies have an undeniable role in supporting the nascent improved biomass cookstoves market, with majority of the buyers having low paying capacities.
Capacity Needs of Government Officials for Integration of Energy and Human Development
09 Apr 2015
| Mr S Arun
Achieving Sustainable Energy for all (SE4ALL) is one of the fundamental needs for attaining development goals while ensuring economic growth and safeguarding the environment. Access to energy is a necessary precondition for achieving many development goals that extend far beyond the energy sector-eradicating poverty, increasing food production, providing clean water, improving public health, enhancing education, creating economic opportunity, and empowering women. Despite this, ground realities are starkly different in India. Around 600 million Indians do not have access to electricity and about 700 million Indians use biomass as their primary energy source for cooking.
Tax Regime for Improved Cookstoves and Its Implications
14 Sep 2014
| Ms P R Krithika
Around 160 million households in India rely on traditional biomass - firewood, cattle dung, and crop residues as cooking fuel. When biomass is burnt in traditional inefficient cookstoves it emits smoke that has significant health and climate impacts resulting in 10 lakh premature deaths per year. Efforts to replace inefficient traditional cookstoves with cleaner, more efficient improved biomass cookstoves have been in process across the country for several years now, primarily driven by grassroots institutions and government technical institutes. One of the biggest hurdles inhibiting the uptake of improved (biomass) cookstoves (hereafter referred to as ICs) is price.
India's coal reserves are vastly overstated: is anyone listening?
04 Mar 2011
| Mr R K Batra
The policy brief deals exclusively with thermal coal and demolishes the myth that India has plenty of coal. The brief explains in detail why the coal that can be extracted is only a small fraction of our total coal inventories. If we remain in denial, we will not take the urgent and necessary steps to augment these reserves.
Cooking with cleaner fuels in India: a strategic analysis and assessment
07 Dec 2010
| Ms Meena Sehgal
The series 'Cooking with cleaner fuels in India: a strategic analysis and assessment' is a collection of four policy briefs that carry findings emanating from a joint research by TERI and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (with support from UNICEF) on healthy cooking fuel options for India. The briefs trace the usage of different fuels in rural and urban households, health implications of using less cleaner cooking fuels, and stakeholder partnerships of governments, funding agencies, industry and consumer groups to accelerate adoption of cleaner cooking fuels.