IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Fuel Choices in Rural Maharashtra

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Jack Gregory

    ()

  • David I. Stern

    ()

Abstract

Traditional biomass remains a large source of energy in developing countries, particular in rural areas. Use of biomass can contribute to deforestation and hence climate change as well as indoor air pollution. Therefore, significant efforts have been made to improve the efficiency with which it is used and to reduce particulate emissions through the adoption of improved stoves and to transition households to modern energy carriers. We report on and analyze the results of an energy use survey in two tribal villages in rural Maharashtra, India. Though there is significant heterogeneity between the effects of the variables in the two villages there are some robust results. We find modest evidence for the 'energy ladder' hypothesis and that use of higher quality energy sources reduces total energy use ceteris paribus. Income elasticities of fuel demand are small. Additionally, we demonstrate that household size, stove ownership, and season influence rural energy choices. However, the effects of improved stoves are small and not consistent across the villages.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://ccep.anu.edu.au/data/2012/pdf/wpaper/CCEP1207.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Centre for Climate Economics & Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University in its series CCEP Working Papers with number 1207.

as
in new window

Length:
Date of creation: Sep 2012
Handle: RePEc:een:ccepwp:1207
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Crawford Building, Lennox Crossing, Building #132, Canberra ACT 2601

Phone: +61 2 6125 4705
Fax: +61 2 6125 5448
Web page: https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Household energy; income elasticity; improved stoves; India;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
  • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Edmonds, Eric V., 2002. "Government-initiated community resource management and local resource extraction from Nepal's forests," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 89-115, June.
  2. Rema Hanna & Esther Duflo & Michael Greenstone, 2016. "Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 80-114, February.
  3. Michael T. Toman & Barbora Jemelkova, 2003. "Energy and Economic Development: An Assessment of the State of Knowledge," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 93-112.
  4. Nepal, Mani & Nepal, Apsara & Grimsrud, Kristine, 2011. "Unbelievable but improved cookstoves are not helpful in reducing firewood demand in Nepal," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(01), pages 1-23, February.
  5. Jane Fry & Tim Fry & Keith McLaren, 2000. "Compositional data analysis and zeros in micro data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(8), pages 953-959.
  6. David I. Stern, 2012. "Interfuel Substitution: A Meta‐Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 307-331, 04.
  7. Ekholm, Tommi & Krey, Volker & Pachauri, Shonali & Riahi, Keywan, 2010. "Determinants of household energy consumption in India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5696-5707, October.
  8. Heltberg, Rasmus, 2004. "Fuel switching: evidence from eight developing countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 869-887, September.
  9. Stern, David I., 2010. "Energy quality," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1471-1478, May.
  10. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo & Pachauri, Shonali, 2007. "Fuel choices in urban Indian households," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(06), pages 757-774, December.
  11. Bhatt, B. P. & Sachan, M. S., 2004. "Firewood consumption pattern of different tribal communities in Northeast India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-6, January.
  12. Rasmus Heltberg & Thomas Channing Arndt & Nagothu Udaya Sekhar, 2000. "Fuelwood Consumption and Forest Degradation: A Household Model for Domestic Energy Substitution in Rural India," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(2), pages 213-232.
  13. Edwards, John H. Y. & Langpap, Christian, 2012. "Fuel choice, indoor air pollution and children's health," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(04), pages 379-406, August.
  14. Sudhakara Reddy, B., 1995. "A multilogit model for fuel shifts in the domestic sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 20(9), pages 929-936.
  15. Arnold, J.E. Michael & Kohlin, Gunnar & Persson, Reidar, 2006. "Woodfuels, livelihoods, and policy interventions: Changing Perspectives," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 596-611, March.
  16. Khandker, Shahidur R. & Barnes, Douglas F. & Samad, Hussain A., 2012. "Are the energy poor also income poor? Evidence from India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-12.
  17. Hosier, Richard H. & Dowd, Jeffrey, 1987. "Household fuel choice in Zimbabwe : An empirical test of the energy ladder hypothesis," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 347-361, December.
  18. Gupta, Gautam & Kohlin, Gunnar, 2006. "Preferences for domestic fuel: Analysis with socio-economic factors and rankings in Kolkata, India," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 107-121, April.
  19. Masera, Omar R. & Saatkamp, Barbara D. & Kammen, Daniel M., 2000. "From Linear Fuel Switching to Multiple Cooking Strategies: A Critique and Alternative to the Energy Ladder Model," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2083-2103, December.
  20. Edward L Onyebuchi, 1989. "Alternate Energy Strategies for the Developing World's Domestic Use: A Case Study of Nigerian Households' Fuel Use Patterns and Preferences," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 121-138.
  21. Gundimeda, Haripriya & Kohlin, Gunnar, 2008. "Fuel demand elasticities for energy and environmental policies: Indian sample survey evidence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 517-546, March.
  22. Gunnar Köhlin & Gregory S. Amacher, 2005. "Welfare Implications of Community Forest Plantations in Developing Countries: The Orissa Social Forestry Project," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(4), pages 855-869.
  23. M. Macauley & M. Naimuddin & P.C. Agarwal & J. Dunkerley, 1989. "Fuelwood Use in Urban Areas: A Case Study of Raipur, India," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 157-180.
  24. Pachauri, Shonali & Jiang, Leiwen, 2008. "The household energy transition in India and China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(11), pages 4022-4035, November.
  25. van Ruijven, Bas & Urban, Frauke & Benders, René M.J. & Moll, Henri C. & van der Sluijs, Jeroen P. & de Vries, Bert & van Vuuren, Detlef P., 2008. "Modeling Energy and Development: An Evaluation of Models and Concepts," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 2801-2821, December.
  26. Heltberg, Rasmus, 2005. "Factors determining household fuel choice in Guatemala," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(03), pages 337-361, June.
  27. Pitt, Mark M., 1985. "Equity, externalities and energy subsidies The case of kerosine in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 201-217, April.
  28. Andrew D. Foster & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2003. "Economic Growth and the Rise of Forests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(2), pages 601-637.
  29. Cooke, Priscilla & Köhlin, Gunnar & Hyde, William F., 2008. "Fuelwood, forests and community management – evidence from household studies," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(01), pages 103-135, February.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. My Year in Review 2013
    by David Stern in Stochastic Trend on 2013-12-24 04:20:00
  2. Fuel Choices in Rural Maharashtra
    by David Stern in Stochastic Trend on 2012-09-07 03:01:00

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:een:ccepwp:1207. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (David Stern)

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.