Climbing Energy Ladder or Fuel Stacking in Indian Households: A Multinomial Logit Approach

There has been a significant increase in the use of clean fuels for cooking like LPG in India in past years, especially after the government started promoting LPG through different programmes. But it is often found that, in spite of the fact that some households who have LPG connectivity, are still continuing with the use of unclean fuels like biomass (fuelwood, dung-cake etc.) or kerosene in their households. The present study analyses whether the households are actually switching fuels or stacking multiple fuels though they have access to clean energy. The study highlights the role of socio-economic factors that influence a household’s probability of relying on a single fuel or multiple fuels simultaneously for cooking in India. The paper uses multinomial logit model to analyse their role in the choice between only biomass, biomass with other fuels, kerosene and no biomass, LPG and no biomass. The data is derived from Consumer Expenditure Survey of National Sample Survey Organization. The analysis is done for the rural and urban sectors separately. The model shows that in rural areas households prefer biomass or biomass with other fuels over LPG with larger number of household members, increase in the age of the household head, self-employed groups or even increase in education level of household heads in some occasions, while in urban areas LPG is the preferred choice of fuel.