Current Affairs Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination

Topic: Cooking Energy Access Survey 2020

Why in News?

• Recently, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) has released ‘Cooking Energy Access Survey 2020’.

About the Survey

• The Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), in collaboration with the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy (ISEP), Johns Hopkins University has conducted the survey across six states ― Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
• Cooking Energy Access Survey 2020 is a survey of 2,765 urban slum and rural households across the six states.

• The six states account for nearly a quarter of India’s urban slum population.

Key Highlights

• Around 16 per cent of households are still using traditional fuels such as firewood, dung cakes, agricultural residue, charcoal, and kerosene as their primary fuel and over a third are stacking LPG with these polluting fuels.
• This increases exposure to indoor air pollution for such households. There are more than 13.7 million people living in slums in India.
• While the number of LPG connections has increased dramatically over the past decade due to Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), exclusive use of LPG is limited to just over half of the total households in urban slums.
• Drawing a direct correlation between poverty and energy access, the study finds the continued use of polluting fuels, and inability of households to transition to LPG, is primarily because of affordability.
• While the government subsidises LPG connections under PMUY, families often cannot afford to buy refills of LPG after the initial subsidy, and fall back on using traditional polluting fuels.
• Deficient infrastructure leads to households either not having access to electricity or not being able to afford it and therefore resorting to polluting fuels for heating in the winter, negating the positive effects of the LPG.

About PMUY

• Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 1st, 2016 in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh.
• PMUY has been recognised by World Health Organisation as one of the decisive intervention by the Government to address the Indoor Air Pollution which accounts for nearly 10 lakh deaths in a year in the country.
• PMUY aims at providing clean-cooking fuel to the poor households, which are otherwise vulnerable to various health hazards associated with indoor air pollution and bringing in qualitative charges in the living standards.
• Under PMUY, LPG coverage has increased from 55% to 97.4%.the scheme has acted as one of the biggest catalyst of socio-economic change in the status of women in the country.
• As on 30.11.2020, more than 7.5 Cr PMUY beneficiaries have availed free cylinders under the scheme.