Energy inequality and air pollution nexus in India

Energy usage, inequality, and their impacts are deeply intertwined, especially in India. Every year, cooking using biomass-based solid fuel usage causes death to tens of thousands of Indians, specifically, economically unprivileged people. Solid fuel burning has been known as one of the prominent sources of ambient PM_2.5 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of <2.5 μm) concentration in the atmosphere. Thus, limiting the PM_2.5 emission from biomass-based cooking fuel through the transition to LPG has gained priority. The government report in India indicates that nearly 8 million households became beneficiaries of the LPG connection through the PMUY scheme till 2019. The transition to clean cooking fuel may have an influence on the ambient PM_2.5 concentration. In this study, to explore the nexus between energy inequality and air pollution, we investigated the present status of clean fuel usage in India and its drivers, including the impact of such a massive transition to cleaner fuel on ambient air quality, with a specific focus on PM_2.5. The results show an improvement of 15 % in LPG usage from 2015 to 2019 in India., Yet the majority of poorer (>60 %) and poorest communities (>90 %) still use solid biomass as the cooking fuel. No significant correlation (r = 0.036; p-value ≫ 0.05) was obtained between LPG usage and ambient PM_2.5 concentration suggesting the influence of other confounding factors which might subdue the anticipated effect of the usage of clean fuel. The analysis suggests, despite the successful launching of the PMUY, the low LPG usage pattern among the poor, because of the lack of an effective subsidy policy, might jeopardize the effort to fix the standard of ambient air as per WHO.