India's Transition to E-cooking

December 21, 2023

Despite Indian government efforts over seven decades to enable access to clean cooking fuels, about 500 million people in India still cook on polluting fuels such as wood, biomass, animal dung cakes, agriresidue and kerosene. The resulting indoor air pollution causes about 0.6 million premature deaths in every year, and untold damages in the form of serious health risks. This report found that it also leads to CO2 emissions of over 350 million tonne every year in the country—which is more than India’s transport sector or industrial sector’s emissions.

This report aims to provide a roadmap for large-scale adoption of e-cooking for rural households in the country. As rural India accounts for two-thirds of the total number of households and access to other means of clean cooking, such as LPG, is limited in rural areas, this report emphasizes that the intervention will have more impact in rural households than its urban counterpart.