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School Research Seminar

Examining the Willingness to Pay for Clean Cooking Energy: Evidence from Rural India

A recent study found that more than 80 percent of rural households in six of the poorest states of India continue to rely on biomass for their cooking needs. Exposure to the resulting household air pollution from the combustion of biomass is one of the greatest environmental health risks, especially for women and children. Since 2016, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY scheme), launched by the Government of India, has attempted to address this public health issue by providing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections to socioeconomically weaker households at a reduced upfront cost. However, PMUY ignores the component of high monthly refill cost for LPG cylinders, which is one of the biggest bottlenecks in transitioning towards sustained use of LPG. Using willingness-to-pay (WTP) data from the Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity (ACCESS) 2018 survey, this paper examines factors determining households’ WTP for LPG refills. To put the analysis into perspective, we also estimate the average WTP. The policy objective of the analysis is to enable effective targeting of financial and non-financial support to ensure sustained use of LPG.
Seminar Room 2-2,
Level 2, Manasseh Meyer,
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy,
National University of Singapore
Thu 4 April 2019
12:15 PM - 01:30 PM

Sunil Mani

Sunil Mani

Research Analyst, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) New Delhi

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Namrata Chindarkar

Namrata Chindarkar

Assistant Professor, LKYSPP