Globally, 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity and an estimated 2.7 billion rely on traditional biomass – wood, charcoal, animal waste and agricultural residues – for cooking and space heating. Roughly one third of this population lives in rural India. Over the past two decades, considerable efforts have been made to introduce improved cookstoves and/or cleaner cooking fuels in India, but as in other countries, these interventions have largely failed to bring about a large-scale transition towards cleaner, more “modern” cooking technologies.

This new World Bank report discusses India’s best improved biomass stove programs and suggests policies and practical ways to promote the use of cleaner burning, energy efficient, and affordable stoves. It includes case studies from six Indian states—Maharashtra, Haryana, Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal—and other stove programs around the globe.

India has historically subsidized energy with the objective of protecting its consumers from international price volatility and providing energy access for its citizens, especially the poor. This guide focuses on the scale and impacts of energy subsidies in India.

This study provides the review of two World Bank experts on the 19 household projects supported by the Bank.

India’s impressive economic growth has spurred a story of urgent energy demand and need for greater energy inclusion. According to the International Energy Association, over 400 million people in India (36% of the total population) still live without reliable electricity. Over 725 million (70%) rely on biomass cooking fuels like cow dung, wood and farm waste. Against this backdrop, new renewable energy technologies, products, and services have surged to meet the growing energy demands of poor households at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).

This new report contains valuable data on consumption levels and pattern of households in Delhi. It also provides information on the main demographic features like literacy, social-group, marital status, occupational distribution, and other aspects of living conditions like, source of energy for cooking/lighting, dwelling ownership type, etc.

This document contains the basic information to serve as guide for adopting the renewable energy by common man.The document has two parts:
1) Biogas for Common Man, and 2) Solar Photovoltaic Power for Urban Households.

Poor People's Energy Outlook 2012 examines the linkages between energy access and better opportunities for earning a living, while recognising that there are many barriers which must be overcome on the path from improved energy access to increased incomes. This second report in the PPEO series also revisits the definition of energy access reintroducing the concept of Total Energy Access as a progressive framework to measure how people use energy in a healthy and productive way.

There is a growing consensus that universalisation of modern energy services is central to reducing major elements of poverty and hunger, increasing literacy and education, and improving health care, employment opportunities, and lives of women and children. In India, more than 700 million people lack access to modern energy services for lighting, cooking, water pumping and other productive purposes. Without these services people—most often women—are forced to spend significant amount of their time and energy on subsistence activities. This acts as a barrier to the gender development.

Initiated in 2005, this study was requested by the government of India to: develop the analytical capacity required to help identify low carbon growth opportunities, up to the end of the 15th Five Year Plan (March 2032), in major sectors of the economy; and facilitate informed decision-making by improving the knowledge base and raising national and international awareness of India’s efforts to address global climate change. India is at a unique juncture in its development.