Reply filed by the Director, Environment-cum-Special Secretary, Forest, Environment and Climate Change Department, Odisha and Member Secretary, Odisha Coastal Zone Management Authority, May 1, 2025. NGT, had registered suo motu in response to the news item in the Hindu, May 4, 2024 titled "Swell waves likely to strike coastal areas …
Energy is important both for economic development, but it also plays a major role in improving conditions at the household level. The notion of an energy poverty line is well accepted around the world. There is a large body of literature on how to measure income poverty and the reliability …
The 2014 edition of the PPEO looks back at three years of analysis and innovative approaches to defining energy access and addressing energy poverty as presented in previous PPEOs, to re-emphasise the key enabling role that energy plays in lifting people out of poverty, and the logic of and necessity …
This paper explores the link between fossil-fuel subsidies and gender in India. It focuses on the likely gender impacts of reform across cooking, lighting, pumping and transport fuels. Research finds subsidies have provided little benefit to the rural population and to the poor, especially to two thirds of people who …
Energy is a key input for the socio-economic development of a country, particularly for countries like India. Hence, it is important to holistically and objectively understand and assess the country’s energy sector, so that policies and interventions can be appropriately prioritized to further the country’s development. This report develops a …
Efforts to bring cleaner, more efficient stoves to the billions of people who use traditional biomass for cooking and heating have gained new momentum in recent years, driven both by longstanding health and environmental concerns, and by a growing recognition of the importance of modern energy access for development. In …
Deforestation in developing and middle income countries is an urgent global problem, affecting climate change, soil erosion, major river basins, and livelihoods of poor households living near the forests. Public discussions of the problem are frequently dominated by widely held beliefs concerning the extent of deforestation (that it is large …
Energy access in rural India has been a development priority for the government for many decades. However, 45 per cent of rural households lack access to electricity. Around 700 million people depend on biomass for their energy needs, predominantly for cooking, and 77.5 million households still use kerosene for lighting.
This report presents the estimates pertaining to various facets of household consumer expenditure at National and State levels. The report not only gives rural and urban averages of Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) at State/UT and National level but also provides insights into the differences in MPCE within the rural …
A comparison among firewood, charcoal and LPG shows that each energy source has its own specific advantages, inconveniences and limitations. They should be considered jointly within a comprehensive, inter-sectoral energy strategy that provides an effective framework for governments. Fossil fuels are required in areas where the ecological limits of woodfuel …
This document reflects the current state of the art in the growing topic of generating cooking energy by using dry biomass for gasification. It includes the technical background, together with project examples, as well as more recent developments in gasifier stove technologies. The publication concludes with a look into biochar, …
This paper explores energy access, energy poverty, and energy development as energy security concerns confronting Asia and the Pacific. Improved access to energy services is arguably the key defining characteristic of economic development. Lack of access and energy poverty contribute to hunger with women and children spending long hours gathering …
Global energy politics - a presentation by Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director-General, CSE at "CSE Annual South Asian Media Briefing Workshop on Climate Change, 2013" being held in New Delhi from September 18-19, 2013.
This report investigates the sustainable energy opportunities and challenges in the region in relation to poverty reduction and development. It is produced in line with the United Nations Secretary General’s Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SE4ALL), which seeks to reach three goals by 2030: Universal access to modern energy; double …
The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) conducts nationwide household consumer expenditure surveys at regular intervals as part of its “rounds”, each round normally of a year’s duration. The NSS surveys are conducted through household interviews from a random sample of households selected through a scientific design and cover practically the …
India’s huge expansion in rural electrification in the 1980s and 1990s offers lessons for other countries today. The paper examines the long-term effects of household electrification on consumption, labor supply, and schooling in rural India over 1982–99. It finds that household electrification brought significant gains to consumption and earnings, the …
Globally, solid fuels are used by about 3 billion people for cooking. These fuels have been associated with many health effects, including acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) in young children. Nepal has a high prevalence of use of biomass for cooking and heating. This case–control study was conducted among a …
From lighting in streets and in the home, to power for water pumping, cooking, and basic processing and communications, access to energy enables people to live better lives. It also transforms health-care provision – enabling vaccines to be refrigerated, implements to be sterilized and diagnostic equipment to be powered. Generating …
India has witnessed high economic growth since the 1980s, and a reduction in the share of income poor, though the measured extent of this reduction varies, has been confirmed by different methods. Poverty, however, has multiple dimensions, hence this paper explores the improvement in other social deprivations. An analysis of …
The report indicates that two-thirds of Indian families, or 166 million households, still use solid fuel traditional stoves and will continue to do so over the next decade, leading to 875,000 premature and avoidable deaths annually from indoor air pollution. It also notes that more widespread uptake of clean cookstoves …
In our article “Subsidies for Whom? The Case of LPG in India” (EPW, 3 November 2012), we demonstrated convincingly that the distribution of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) uptake in India is heavily skewed in favour of the urban affluent and argued that the state policy of capping the subsidies to …
