This clean cooking fuel plan needs to be more proactive

In mid-November 2021, I met Leenu Biswal, who is twenty years old, in the Dandsingh gram panchayat of Deogarh district, Odisha. She lives with her in-laws and is pregnant with her second child. Her husband works in another district and comes home once in a few months. They have Ujjwala connection but it hasn’t been refilled for a long time. Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) A flagship scheme of 2016 aimed at providing clean cooking fuel like LPG to rural and underprivileged households, who were otherwise using traditional cooking fuels such as firewood, coal, cow dung cakes.

health and clean energy

When I ask her if she likes to cook with gas, she nods loudly. She also says that she wants to refill. I ask him if he has around ₹950 to pay for the refill of the bigger cylinder. It is yes, again. We go through his LPG customer manual and call the LPG distributor for making refill bookings. The cylinder is delivered to him in two days.

There is a lesson in this. Kirk Smith, eminent professor at Berkeley, who passed away in 2020, was an expert who worked on indoor air pollution in India for more than three decades, who focused on health benefits by targeting pregnant women to use LPG. Talked about high returns in the case.

There is also Dr. Gargi, who runs a rural health clinic in Udaipur with an NGO, which recommends gas cooking to tuberculosis patients who consult them. According to the recently released National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5, the prevalence of TB was higher in households using solid fuels than those using clean cooking fuels in most states.

The number of LPG distributors has increased from 17,916 to 25,116 in the five years of Ujjwala, there has been a drastic reduction in the number of administrative blocks which do not have LPG distributors. There are hundreds if not thousands of villages that did not have a single LPG connection before the days of Ujjwala; Hence the delivery of cylinders at the village level was unheard of.

use of fuel stacking

In villages, I often see kitchens using several types of cooking chulhas – LPG, fuel wood, induction or electric heaters and even kerosene. an open firewood stove Often used for bathing water, for cooking large quantities of steamed rice and animal feed. Some of these may not shift to LPG anytime soon.

This fuels stacking is similar to the practice of the poor – having a basket of livelihood options rather than relying on a single source of income. This takes into account factors such as uneven cash flow, seasonal availability of biomass and ambient heat requirement during winter.

During extreme weather events, LPG cylinders come to the rescue.

Data on LPG usage

In five years, the average per capita consumption among Ujjwala customers has increased from about three cylinders per year (14.2 kg) to 4.2 (2020-21), when the full effect of free refills under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana was seen. went. ,

a paper in nature (Do and others.) showed that only 45% of non-Ujjwala rural consumers use five or more cylinders per year, while data from oil marketing companies shows that from October 2020 to September 2021, 32% of Ujjwala households use five or more cylinders in a year. Were using more cylinders. Therefore, the relatively poor Ujjwala consumers are reaching the LPG consumption level of the relatively well-endowed non-Ujjwala rural consumers. LPG has earned its place in the cooking energy basket of the poor. It is also not a greenhouse gas (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), assigned a global warming potential (GWP) with a factor of zero. Solar, Electric Heater, Better Biomass stove And biogas also deserves to be a part of this energy basket.

factors that helped

After meeting the target of listing 80 million Ujjwala customers by the end of 2019, the three oil marketing companies that handle the distribution of LPG through their network of distributors shifted their focus to reach out to less refill consumers. Have given.

To make it possible for someone like Leenu to opt for using LPG, a quick recap is in order. It was the successful implementation of the Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG (DBTL) or PAHAL (Direct Humanitarian Benefit) scheme of 2014 that freed up the financial resources needed to dream up a massive program for deposit-free LPG connections. Once Ujjwala was conceptualized and launched, increased availability of LPG was ensured. This was followed by the addition of various capacities such as ports to handle imports, tanks to store LPG, pipelines and trucks to transport gas, and bottling plants to fill more cylinders. Production of cylinders, pressure regulators, hoses and economical LPG stoves were also increased. New distributors/dealers were appointed to reach out to remote areas.

Comment | Health first, financial prudence later

Furthermore, the then Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan also maintained enthusiasm for Ujjwala, creating opportunities for local MPs and other elected representatives to support Ujjwala and its implementation.

a challenging phase

LPG prices have gone up as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic and government aid is focusing on other challenges. This development may derail the gains made by Ujjwala customers in terms of LPG adoption. It’s time to get creative about how to sustain LPG adoption in these challenging times. Ujjwala also has the potential to deliver benefits on many fronts.

Read also | CAG sees diversion of LPG cylinders for commercial use

Overall, the push should be such that every household moves towards adopting a more sustainable cooking energy basket. Improving regular and on-demand supply of LPG, options for refill financing, alternative beneficial uses for cow dung and biomass – possibly on the pattern of procurement of cow dung as is being done in Chhattisgarh – and women’s income Through the massive increase in the National Rural Livelihoods Mission there is great potential to inspire women in all to choose more sustainable cooking mixes.

Nidhi Prabha Tiwari works as a Senior Social Sector Specialist at Ujjwala with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. views expressed are personal