How Electric Cooking Can Help Indian Families Transition To Cleaner Fuels

Haarika uses a traditional biomass stove for her cooking needs, with her seven-year-old daughter keeping her company as she prepares the family’s dinner. They use leftover wood from a construction site with dung cakes for the stove. They want to apply for a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or cooking gas connection but Haarika is not sure if they can manage the expenses. “We are used to this stove but the smoke is too much. I have a recurring cough and my daughter is underweight,” says Haarika.

India is home to 1.45 billion people with over 350 million households. Of these, about 127 million households or 577 million people still rely on conventional solid fuels for cooking, estimates suggest. The situation worsens in rural areas, where 54.3% of households rely on traditional biomass-based fuels such as wood, dung, briquettes, pellets, and agricultural leftovers. Even where families have received connections under a Union government programme, many are unable to afford refills and are falling back on conventional fuels, as we explain below.

Solid fuel like firewood, cow dung and dry grass are highly damaging to health, as IndiaSpend reported in April 2019. Cooking on traditional chulhas leads to incomplete combustion, and emission of particles such as suspended particulate matter, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polyorganic matter and formaldehyde. All these are harmful for respiratory health.

Household air pollution led to 482,000 deaths and 21.3 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs)--years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death--in 2017, according to a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health, a global journal, as IndiaSpend reported in December 2018.

Of all premature deaths caused by household air pollution, 44% were due to pneumonia, 54% due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and 2% due to lung cancer, we had reported. Women and younger children who spend the most time at home are the most vulnerable. Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy leads to outcomes such as low birth weight and stillbirth.

Coal, solid biomass, kerosene, LPG, piped natural gas and others are primarily used as cooking fuels. The coverage of households with an LPG connection has increased due to the Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojana. About 103 million households have received cooking gas connections under the programme as of July 15, 2024, but the prohibitory costs of refills meant that in 2021-22, 9.6% of beneficiaries took no LPG cylinder refills, 11.3% took only one refill and 56.5% took four or fewer refills in 2021-22, according to data provided in the Lok Sabha in July 2022 and data from a response given in the Rajya Sabha on August 1, 2022.

On the other hand, the use of electricity for cooking has been slow: According to the National Family Health Survey in 2019-21, 0.6% households reported using e-cooking.

According to a September 2021 report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), a policy research think-tank, 5% of Indian homes use e-cooking gadgets, 10.3% in urban areas and 2.7% in rural areas. These data are based on India Residential Energy Survey (IRES) 2020 which covered 14,850 households in 152 districts.

E-cooking combined with rooftop solar could be a quick and healthy way to transition people to clean cooking, but upfront costs on gadgets and suitable utensils, perceptions of increase in running costs, fewer options for multi-pot cooking--standard in the Indian context--and apprehensions about the taste of food cooked on e-stoves are affecting the pace of adoption, studies have shown.

The awareness problem

There are several factors such as consumer perception and levels of awareness that affect the choice of cooking fuel. With changing times and fast-paced lives, there is a preference for fast cooking methods, generally requiring two-pot cooking, and this is where LPG becomes more accepted as it is a proven technology and has been around for decades, says Akif Farooqui, Fellow, Social Transformation & CSR Division, The Energy and Resources Institute.

“While induction [cookstoves] could be a potential option in urban households, improved chulhas could be popularised in rural areas. The difference is mainly due to factors like convenience and existing cooking patterns that are distinct for rural and urban users,” feels Farooqui.

Further, while electric cooking is slowly gaining popularity, especially in urban areas, there is still a lack of awareness about its benefits. For example, e-cooking needs specialised utensils that would work on the induction stove, which may not be as easily available in rural areas. Also, a single-pot cooking option may not be suitable for large families. Two-pot induction stoves are more expensive. People also perceive the recurring cost of induction to be higher as it may add to the electricity bill.

There are also apprehensions about the taste of the food cooked on such 'modern' appliances as opposed to that cooked using traditional methods. Even with LPG, 24% households that use solid fuel for cooking felt that food prepared on LPG stoves does not taste good.

“To address this, we can look at improving consumer awareness of electric cooking and how it can handle all cuisines that an LPG stove can,” says Abhishek Kar, Senior Programme Lead at CEEW.

Most homes now use e-cooking as a supplement to other clean fuels such as LPG. The IRES data show that about half the e-cooking consumers use it on a regular basis. Although there was a lot of skepticism regarding e-cooking among non-users, 60% of e-cooking users believe that switching to e-cooking entirely would be viable.

Induction cookstoves and rice cookers are the most popular devices, each used by nearly 40% of the e-cooking users, followed by microwave ovens, the IRES found. Choice of e-cooking devices varies across states, with rice cookers dominating in Andhra Pradesh, induction plates in Tamil Nadu and microwave ovens in Delhi. In Assam, low-income households use electric coil-based cookstoves, whereas wealthier households use microwave ovens or rice cookers.

These patterns suggest that jurisdictions with lower electricity pricing and gaps in billing and revenue collection will probably see higher adoption rates of e-cooking in the future.

“Daily cooking on a chulha left me with burning eyes and breathlessness, now I use a rice cooker for cooking rice and LPG for all other cooking and it has made my life much easier, the new scheme has helped in reducing my expenses,” says Ramadevi, a domestic worker from Hyderabad.

The cost factor

Women in urban-poor and rural households across India face significant hardships due to the high cost of LPG refills. “Despite the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana providing subsidised LPG connections, many cannot afford the recurring high costs, forcing them to rely on traditional chulhas,” says Bhavreen Kandhari, co-founder of Warrior Moms in India, a network of mothers pushing for clean air and climate action.

This results in severe health impacts and poor air quality, as we explained above. Improved stoves are the cheapest way of improving health, according to a World Health Organization report, as IndiaSpend reported in February 2015. In Africa and South and South-east Asia, the regions with the greatest number of people exposed to toxic soot, improved stoves could reduce the burden of disease associated with indoor air pollution for an average yearly cost of Rs 30,000 to 37,000 per healthy year gained.

Households utilising piped natural gas, which is now only available in a few Indian cities, will only need to pay Rs 340 per month for the exclusive use of PNG for cooking, according to CEEW estimates. Thus, PNG is currently the least expensive cooking energy option. By December 2020, 7.29 million PNG connections (almost 2% of Indian homes) were in use in urban India. The Indian government intends to connect 50 million homes in the country to PNG.

The impetus on LPG and PNG could be explained by the economics of e-cooking versus LPG. Many households, especially those from lower income categories, would find the large upfront cost of electric cooking appliances to be unaffordable.

Recurring expenses represent yet another crucial limitation. For families receiving subsidised electricity (tariff less than Rs 6.6 per kWh), e-cooking would be operationally cost-effective as against an unsubsidised LPG refill, CEEW found. With subsidised LPG, only people who pay a tariff of less than Rs 5 per kWh would find e-cooking more affordable. However, if these homes use a lot of power for cooking, they run the risk of being transferred to a higher tariff slab, which might not be as cost-effective, the analysis said.

“People need to be more aware about the reliability of electricity to use induction stoves, government need to advocate the usage of decentralised renewable energy to electric cooking, so that the dependency on electricity reduces,” says Sunil Dahiya, from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Metros take the lead

Affluent metropolitan households are likely to be the first to adopt e-cooking. Given that India’s current power generation is mainly from coal-fired thermal power plants, “any e-cooking roadmap is incomplete without also including a roadmap to decarbonize India’s power sector fully”, a December 2023 analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment says.

According to an analysis by CEEW, depending on rooftop solar power generation capacity, a typical household relying entirely on electric cooking will require 974 kWh of electricity every year, or about 80 units per month.

According to a June 2022 review, average power consumption in urban households was about 125 units while rural households consumed 60 units a month. This means that even using e-cooking exclusively would keep families in Indian cities under the 200 units being offered free of cost in several places including Karnataka, Delhi and Jharkhand. In the vote-on-account presented in February 2024, the finance minister said 10 million households would be provided 300 units of electricity free of cost using rooftop solar.

Further, the CEEW paper shows that while the total cost of an induction cooker is around Rs 2,200, it is cheaper than using LPG.

For homes who spend less than Rs 9 per unit for electricity, e-cooking will be more cost-effective than LPG cooking at the current 14.2 kg LPG refill pricing of approximately Rs 1,100. By targeting homes which spend less on electricity, the government can offer subsidies in purchasing induction stoves and create awareness about the shift to clean cooking methods.

It is crucial to think about the possibility of using renewable energy for large-scale direct electric cooking or indirect electric to thermal conversion cooking technologies like indirect solar cookers, given the increasing penetration of renewable electricity-based capacity and its generation, a 2023 discussion paper by Vasudha Foundation, a non-profit working to promote environment-friendly, socially just and sustainable models of energy, says

In comparison to gas and biomass cook stoves, electric cook stoves--especially induction cook stoves and electric pressure cookers--have been demonstrated to be safer, more efficient, and less polluting in terms of exposure, efficiency, and safety. Induction cooking also has the largest abatement cost, the discussion paper said. Furthermore, the greater availability of energy and the improved durability of electric cookstoves make them more beneficial.

“For those having solar rooftop systems, which are mainly on-grid models (they will work only when there is grid supply), the possibility of the induction not being available for cooking in case of power cuts is another concern,” says Farooqui.

Power tariff rates and payment discipline are the other factors that may influence the adoption of e-cooking, the CEEW paper says citing the example of Tamil Nadu, which has the highest e-cooking adoption at 17%.

Conversely, the adoption of e-cooking in all urban rich households could worsen the peak demand stress of the power distribution companies (discoms) and must be approached carefully. “Improving the energy efficiency of induction cook stoves could help reduce electricity consumption and improve affordability,” Kar of CEEW says.

To facilitate quicker and more widespread adoption of e-cooking equipment in India, a strong local manufacturing environment is required which needs domestic research to create e-cooking advances more appropriate for the Indian context, particularly for rural areas, where cooking is done in much larger pots that can be used with the induction tops now in the market.

Even within urban households that have adopted e-cooking, many still depend on LPG and look at induction stoves only as a backup option.

“In our colony most of us use induction cook stoves for cooking as electricity is free for us, and we use LPG only for big batches of cooking,” says Monica Kumar, who lives in the colony of the National Thermal Power Corporation, Ramagundam.

G. Varalakshmi, a homemaker from Hyderabad, says, “I use the induction stove only when there is an emergency and there is lots of cooking to be done, I have to wait in front of the stove as there are chances of spilling and also it needs special vessels, because of which I prefer using LPG for cooking.”

“The comfort of having continuous supply is still not there, the assurance and reliability is still not there, and we still have power cuts. It’s not a luxury we can have if we have children, elders and patients at home; this is a big challenge in the shift to e-cooking,” says Vibhuti Garg, Director of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, South Asia.

While the government has pushed the transition from conventional cookstoves to LPG and PNG, the focus is less on e-cooking. It is important that governments focus more on creating awareness about integrating solar power to cooking systems so that power consumption reduces and more households transition to e-cooking, says Dahiya of CREA.

We have reached out to officials in the government for comment on plans to push e-cooking. We will update this story when we receive a response.

A conference organised by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the power ministry sought to explore how India can accelerate the adoption of e-cooking. “We are coming up with aggregation models whereby prices can be brought down,” additional secretary in the power ministry Ajay Tewari said. “We are moving towards an Indian model of e-cooking to serve Indian kitchens. If we have standard and affordable models, we should be able to cover all urban areas within 2-3 years. By 2030, we will like to cover as many households as possible under e-cooking. This will contribute significantly to our fight against climate change.”

“What is needed is replication at scale,” said BEE director general Abhay Bakre. “Our focus has been on kitchens and locations where cooking can happen for longer periods of time, of 8 – 10 hours per day. Rather than going for full replacement, consumers could go for replacing 50% of their cookers with electric cookers, so that they get the time to build confidence in e-cooking before making a full transition.”

Further, more awareness should be created about the benefits of shifting to cleaner cooking, Dahiya says.

“I used to struggle a lot while using the chulha, collecting firewood and sitting and cooking for hours while taking care of my children was a difficult task for me, now that I have a gas stove, a rice cooker and a microwave, it has become much easier,” says Saroja B., a domestic worker from Hyderabad. Her daughter is a cook and together, they earn Rs 30,000 a month.

”Given the urgency in limiting greenhouse gases and particulate matter emissions, we need to try all alternatives of cleaner cooking methods be it induction stove or integrating solar energy with e-cooking other than LPG,” says Sachchida Nand Tripathi, a Civil Engineering professor from IIT Kanpur.

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