Electric cooking: challenges to its adoption in India

About one-third of the world’s population lacks access to clean cooking solutions, relying instead on polluting fuels and inefficient technologies, among other things. Globally, over two million people die prematurely every year because of indoor air pollution – mostly due to emissions from wood-based cooking. According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), over 56 per cent of the households in rural India and around 15 per cent of those in urban India use some form of kerosene or biomass to cook food. The cost to the climate, local economies and public health has been immense.

There is a clear need in the country to shift households from polluting cooking fuels to cleaner, healthier substitutes. With India’s net-zero ambition at the forefront of its energy policies and the high prices of oil and gas in recent times, LPG cannot be the only clean cooking option for the country -- electric cooking (e-cooking), with benefits like improved indoor air quality, reduced GHG emissions and enhanced per capita energy access for India, is an attractive direction for the country’s clean cooking journey.

Recent policy announcements making provisions for subsidies on induction cookstoves offer clear signals from the government on the direction it wishes to take. However, barriers to e-cooking such as high upfront costs, limited domestic manufacturing capacity, unreliable electricity supply, lack of consumer awareness and preference for traditional customs is making adoption difficult across the board.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) invites you to an online discussion to explore various challenges to adoption of e-cooking in rural and urban India and what regulatory frameworks need to be adopted to encourage its uptake across all social and economic classes in the country.

For more details, please contact:

Noble Varghese
Deputy Programme Manager
Renewable Energy, CSE
Email id: noble.varghese@cseindia.org