Energy access: Are you being served?

India has made remarkable progress in recent years in extending energy access to hundreds of millions of people. The supply-side push has bridged the gap between political promises and policy execution. Now, we have to bridge the gap between policy execution and lived reality.

When the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted in 2015, India had about 40 million households without electricity connection and more than 100 million homes used firewood and cowdung cakes for cooking. India had the dubious distinction of being home to the world’s largest number of energy-poor citizens. 

Then came a big push. Under the Saubhagya scheme, launched in October 2017, almost every willing household has been connected to electricity — a whopping 25 million households. Under the Ujjwala scheme, 65 million households received their first liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder. LPG penetration has jumped from 60 per cent of households in 2015 to more than 85 per cent today. Let us give credit where it is due. 

But energy access goes beyond connections. Just as poverty can no longer be assessed only based on incomes, several metrics matter to understand energy poverty. Connection to the grid is no good if no electrons flow through the wires. Households will continue cooking with traditional biomass if LPG cylinders are unavailable in rural areas. They could regress back into energy poverty if consistent energy services are missing. 

Moreover, minimum thresholds for energy access will rise with time. A functional light and fan could yield to demands for refrigerators or televisions. If small enterprises ran from household premises (say, tailoring), they would need reliable power supply for sewing machines. With rising aspirations, what is good enough today (as energy services) will not suffice tomorrow. 

The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) developed a multi-dimensional, multi-tier framework to evaluate energy access. For cooking energy, the Council considered availability of primary cooking fuel, health impacts of cookstoves and fuel use, quality of cooking, convenience of cooking, and affordability (expenses on all cooking fuels). Electricity access is also multi-dimensional: Load capacity of the power connection, duration of supply, quality of power (high-voltage days that damage appliances and low-voltage days that restrict appliance use), reliability (number of blackout days each month), affordability, and legal status of the connection. Each dimension is assigned a tier (ranging from 0 to 3). A household’s overall tier corresponds to the lowest tier across all dimensions, so that policymakers and on-ground personnel know the weakest link that needs attention.

CEEW used this multi-dimensional framework for its flagship ACCESS survey ( in collaboration with Columbia University in 2015; in 2018* with the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy and National University of Singapore) across rural areas in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. With five million data points, this is the largest panel data on multi-dimensional metrics for energy access in India (and possibly in the world).

This consumer-centric approach yields granular insights. For instance, whereas 60 per cent of rural households in Jharkhand used grid power for lighting (up from 20 per cent in 2015), median hours of supply barely budged (from eight to nine hours). UP saw three-fold increase in homes primarily using electricity for lighting, but also has the highest share of unelectrified households that do not want a connection, even if provided for free. West Bengal — best performer in terms of connections and duration of supply — also witnessed deterioration in reliability and quality of power supply since 2015, relegating many households back to lower tiers.

For cooking energy, 42 per cent of households that graduated from tier 0 since 2015 were Ujjwala beneficiaries. Yet, two-thirds of them are stuck in tier 1, due to continued use of freely available biomass, inability to afford refills, long travel distances to refill LPG cylinders, and intra-household decision-making dynamics.

For instance, in rural West Bengal women had an equal or exclusive say in reordering cylinders in 59 per cent of households. The proportion was only 16 per cent in Madhya Pradesh. Mere connections cannot guarantee that women will be empowered enough to exclusively shift to cleaner cooking fuels. 

A consumer-centric view also helps with policy design. The ACCESS survey revealed that 84 per cent of households preferred subsidies on solar lanterns in lieu of kerosene subsidies. Or that most households want increased LPG subsidies and improved LPG distribution in rural areas. 

Systemic problems, too, gain new perspective. Take electricity theft. Another recent CEEW-ISEP survey** in UP revealed that 84 per cent of rural and urban consumers took a dim view of hooking wires (katiya) to steal electricity. Instead, poor metering and billing is resulting in weak compliance with electricity payments. Only 45 per cent of rural households are metered in UP. If bills are not sent monthly, most rural consumers do not believe that the bill is based on meter readings. The result? Lack of trust between utilities and consumers. When frequently billed, rural consumers are as likely as their urban counterparts to pay on time. 

Energy access is not a binary. Let’s not ask, “Are you connected, yes or no?” Let’s ask, “Are you being served — and how?” Energy needs will evolve with time.
 

 Declaring victory in connecting homes indicates that one mammoth battle has been largely won. The battle to improve household experience — and win consumer trust — will take longer. 

The writer  is CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (https://bsmedia.business-standard.comceew.in). Follow @GhoshArunabha @CEEWIndia * Jain et al (2018) Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity: Survey of States 2018, CEEW Report, November. ** Ganesan, Bharadwaj, and Balani (2019) Electricity Consumers and Compliance: Trust, Reciprocity, and Socio-economic Factors in Uttar Pradesh, CEEW Report, February.