Access to cleaner cooking fuel in India: the regional and gender disparities

Access to clean energy and gender equality are two of the most crucial sustainable development goals (SDGs) that affect households directly. But for a country like India, cooking and procuring fuels are intertwined with intrahousehold gender dynamics, making it even more vital to study them together. Here, we utilise the data from a large-scale rural survey across six energy-poor Indian states to formulate a Clean Fuel Empowerment Index for households. We employ Exploratory Factor Analysis, reducing factor multidimensionality into five major domains of determinants spanning female-led household decisions, awareness, and economic aspects. Further, we use linear and quantile regression methods to investigate the power dynamic within the household by asking whether a female head of the household influences the overall household's empowerment status. Our results confirm that female-led decision-making is the lowest for fuel stackers and only dirty fuel users and, therefore, a significant differentiator from “only clean fuel” users. Our results signify that female-led households and females with decision-making capacity within families are crucial in empowering a home to access clean fuel. Hence, gender-inclusive energy policy could be a significant driving force toward the transition to clean energy.