By Manish Gupta
To reduce dependence on gas as cooking fuel, the government is working on aggregation models to promote electric cooking in kitchens, and is also likely to announce a set of incentives to encourage rural households to switch over.
“After the success of Ujjwala Yojana that brought in clean cooking protecting the health of rural women, electric cooking is going to be our new focus,” Ajay Tewari, additional secretary, ministry of power, said at an event here on Monday.
The ministry is planning to move from clean cooking to e-cooking but faces the challenge of expensive appliances. For this, it has engaged Energy Efficiency Services (EESL), a joint venture of PSUs under the ministry of power.
“We do not have (much) gas reserves in our country, so we need to preserve gas and switch to electricity and this has to come from renewable sources. We are developing some models where affordability is the biggest issue to be tackled,” he said.
India’s LPG consumption has gone up 83% over the past decade from 15.6 million metric tonne in FY13 to 28.5 MT in FY23, as per data from Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell. About 90% of LPG is consumed by households. Even the number of domestic piped natural gas (PNG) connections in India has shot up four times from 2.5 million in 2014 to 10.3 million in 2023.
Tewari said the ministry is working on several models where e-chulha or e-kitchen get electricity either from the grid or from the off-grid solar in rural households that may not be able to afford electricity bills due to e-kitchens.
“We want to come out with some aggregation model where carbon credits will also get aggregated which will offset some cost of the electricity consumed and EESL are good in aggregation modeling,” the joint secretary said.
EESL was instrumental in the success of LED Ujala scheme that helped bring down the cost of LED bulbs from Rs 300-Rs 400 to less than Rs100. They also helped bring down the cost of e-bus models by one-third.
“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,” Tewari said. He said that if required some subsidy will be announces initially.