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Quantifying slum electrification in India and explaining local variation
... The global Covid-19 pandemic has delayed some progress to energy transition to an environmentally friendly fuel technology to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG). However, the pandemic resulted in slow economic growth of 35% in comparison with forecasted economic growth of 50% between year 2019 and 2030 which assist to reduce impact of the delay to transform to green fuels [12]. ...
... The sustainable development case supports how India could initiate additional increase on green energy investment to produce a faster peak resulting in a decline in GHG emissions in synergy with zero CO2 emissions targets [12]. This would be a positive impact for speedily attaining "Sustainable Development Goals" (SDG). ...
... It is important to reiterate that the economic growth of the country was led predominantly by the nonmanufacturing precinct instead of the electricity dependant industrial and commercial sector. This slowed down the rate of industrialisation and urbanisation, but this is about to change as a population 270 billion people are destined to be urbanised in the next 20 years giving rise to an exponential growth of the infrastructure to support this parabolic increase [12]. The expansion would also be supportive of the ILO, 2015 policy as huge infrastructure projects will increase the country's labour requirements, thereby increasing the employment rate. ...
This review focuses on the Just Energy Transition (JET) policies of the BRICS member countries, with the aim of finding lessons and possible adoption of some of the key energy policy aspects utilized in other countries for benchmarking for the South African context. Considerations of the present stage of JET in South Africa and the energy-source mix supporting the electricity sector, cognisant of the lifespan and condition of power plants. Analysis of the energy mix revealed that all nations were energy dependent on electricity which was produced by predominantly fossil fuelled power plants with high GHG (concentrating on high CO2 emissions). It was concluded that some of the learnings and lessons learnt from the BRICS countries might be incorporated into a South African energy plan for the transition with options and guidance for formulation of policies. This study will attract responsible environmentally conscious audience that has a commitment and drive to combat global warming and curbing climate change.
... The financial status of families is a pivotal parameter to consider for modelling their willingness to increase electricity load, especially in terms of appliance ownership. For example, Aklin et al. (Aklin et al. 2015) suggest a positive relation between income and electricity access by deriving econometrically the relation between household's wealth, electrification status (viz. if an household has access to electricity or not) and hours of electricity used per day (for Indian households living in slums, urban and rural areas). ...
... At home, many studies mention the increase in evening study hours as the main benefit of electricity on education (Baldwin 1987;Somashekhar et al. 2000;Wamukonya and Davis 2001;Wijayatunga and Attalage 2005;Alazraki and Haselip 2007;Moharil and Kulkarni 2009;Kumar et al. 2009;Gurung et al. 2011;Aklin et al. 2015;Baldwin et al. 2015;Aglina et al. 2016;Mishra and Behera 2016;Grimm et al. 2017;Lenz et al. 2017) (Evening study time → Education attainments). Since electricity allows replacing or decreasing fuels use (e.g. ...
... Urpelainen and Yoon (Urpelainen and Yoon 2015) conducted a survey among 760 respondents in rural Uttar Pradesh, India, and found that high levels of education increased the willingness to pay for a SHS. Aklin et al. (Aklin et al. 2015) derive econometrically the relation between household's educational level (viz. average years of education) and both electrification status (viz. ...
According to the Agenda 2030 launched by the United Nations in 2015, to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all is now recognised as a fundamental goal to reach by 2030. Focusing on electrification, to ensure universal access to electricity, it is estimated that 2.6 billion people will have to be electrified by 2030, highlighting the need and the urgency to develop sustainable and appropriate approaches to electricity planning. According to this, this thesis deals with methods, approaches, and models for formulating and designing sustainable long-term electrification plans for rural off-grid areas of the world. In particular, the scientific literature highlights the lack of appropriate modelling frameworks for assessing, projecting, and integrating the electricity demand within the rural energy planning endeavour. It also reveals a weak understanding of the dynamic and multifaceted complexities that involve electricity access and socio-economic development.
To fill these gaps, this thesis sets a novel starting point for the research work on energy demand models and their integration in electrification planning procedures, by setting the following three specific objectives: (1) To investigate and discuss the challenge of electricity demand assessment and modelling for rural electrification. This objective is pursued through the development and analysis of specific case-studies, an extensive synthesis and capitalisation of the related scientific literature, and the characterisation of the main modelling fundamentals of this research field. The relevance of electricity demand in rural electricity planning is introduced, by discussing and demonstrating that unreliable forecasts and projections of short- and long-term electricity demand can negatively impact the techno-economic sizing of off-grid power systems. This implies a raising awareness on the criticality of electricity load assessment in rural electrification planning and advocates more research on this topic. The current methodologies adopted for projecting long-term energy demand along the planning horizon are then evaluated, finding that most of the rural energy planning literature neglects the aspect of long-term evaluation of electricity demand. It is also found that modelling long-term projections of energy demand needs to consider the multifaceted aspects related to it, which have both a technical and a socio-economic nature. This leads to the development of the main important causal loop diagrams that characterise the technical and socio-economic dimensions of the electricity-development nexus, proving that the evolution of rural electricity demand can be explained by endogenous dynamics. This result advocates the promotion of modelling techniques able to frame, understand, discuss, and quantitatively formulate the behaviour of complex systems, such as System Dynamics.
The second specific objective is (2) To assess and model the fundamental dynamics, variables, and exogenous policies that characterise the electricity-development nexus and determine the evolution of electricity demand. The chosen method to achieve this objective is system dynamics. All the steps are based on a real case-study as reference, i.e. a hydroelectric-based electrification programme implemented in the rural community of Ikondo, Tanzania, in 2005 by the Italian NGO named CEFA Onlus. The conceptualisation of the model leads to the analysis of the dynamic problem to solve and the purpose to achieve, the model boundary and key variables, and their behaviour. The formulation phase results in the development of a novel simulation model which simulates the impact of electricity access and use on the socio-economic development experienced in Ikondo, and the related feedback on the community’s electricity consumption. This result provides the first important goal in the research and modelling work committed to develop more general, flexible, and customizable energy demand models. The calibration of the model and the analysis of the uncertainties through the Markov-chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) contributes to build confidence in the model structure by verifying its ability to replicate the observed historical behaviour of the system, and by uncovering model flaws and hidden dynamics. The calibration also confirms the appropriateness of system dynamics in modelling the complexities behind the evolution of rural electricity demand, and it provides new modelling insights on some presumed dynamics and their impact on the electricity-development nexus. The testing of the model leads to a novel assessment of the most relevant dynamics and it provides a novel discussion on model results when its inputs take on different values, until the extreme ones, and as if the model were tested for different contexts than Ikondo. Policy testing is also performed for exploring model behaviour when subjected to different polices and exogenous decision-making processes. It provides a list of complementary activities to couple with electrification programmes for enhancing their positive impact on rural communities. These results can support the definition of useful guidelines and best practices for rural electrification, and they advocate an updating of the traditional monitoring and evaluation frameworks commonly used for assessing energy access projects.
The last objective is (3) To integrate demand, load, and energy optimisation models in a more comprehensive electricity planning procedure. This is pursued by developing a computational soft-link between the system dynamics model, a stochastic load profiles generator, and a heuristic energy optimisation tool. The result is a more comprehensive modelling framework for investigating electrification processes – if compared with the traditional approaches and hypotheses commonly adopted to assess and integrate electricity demand in rural electricity planning –, and it provides an important contribution towards the employment of the robust multi-year energy optimisation as the referring standard for off-grid electricity planning.
... The financial status of families is a pivotal parameter to consider for modelling their willingness to increase electricity load, especially in terms of appliance ownership. For example, Aklin, Bayer, Harish, and Urpelainen (2015) suggest a positive relation between income and electricity access by deriving econometrically the relation between household's wealth, electrification status (viz. if an household has access to electricity or not) and hours of electricity used per day (for Indian households living in slums, urban and rural areas). ...
... electric lighting that can reduce household air pollution and associated lung disease and eye problems, as well as and burns and poisonings caused by the use of kerosene (Aklin et al., 2015;Alazraki & Haselip, 2007;Brass et al., 2012;Grimm et al., 2017;Gurung et al., 2011) (Electricity demand → Traditional sources of energy → People's health); electric fans are usually mentioned as systems for increasing the comfort in the houses, at school, and at work (Bastakoti, 2006;Khandker et al., 2013;Kooijman-van Dijk, 2012). Also, in their interesting study in southern Ghana, Jaeger et al. (2016) report how the use of fans increased the perceived comfort inside bed nets, suggesting how an increasing use of fan could potentially increase the adoption of bed net in areas with low access to electricity, and consequently decrease the risk of contracting malaria. ...
... A result that contradicts these findings, is from Lenz et al. (2017) who indicate, based on both econometric models and qualitative interviews with teachers, that the probability of rural Rwandan households sending their children to school does not increase as an effect of grid-electrification. At home, many studies mention the increase in evening study hours as the main benefit of electricity on education (Aglina et al., 2016;Aklin et al., 2015;Alazraki & Haselip, 2007;Baldwin et al., 2015;Grimm et al., 2017;Gurung et al., 2011;Kumar et al., 2009;Lenz et al., 2017;Mishra & Behera, 2016;Moharil & Kulkarni, 2009;Somashekhar et al., 2000;Wamukonya & Davis, 2001;Wijayatunga & Attalage, 2005) (Evening study time → Education attainments). Since electricity allows replacing or decreasing fuels use (e.g. ...
The causal relationships between electrification and development of poor, rural communities are complex and contextual. The existing literature focuses mainly on the impact of rural electrification and electricity use on local socio-economic development, while the reverse feedbacks of various social and economic changes on electricity demand and supply have not been fully characterized. Most electricity access impact assessments assume linear, one-way effects and linear growth in electricity demand. However, the projections rarely match the reality, creating challenges for rural utilities. From a modelling perspective, the lack of attention to dynamic complexities of the electricity-development nexus prevents the appropriate modelling of electricity demand over time and, hence, informed planning for and sizing of power plants. With the goal to improve modelling of the electricity-development nexus, we undertake a comprehensive review and extensive analysis of the peer-reviewed literature on electricity access and its impact on rural socio-economic development, and vice versa. We characterize and describe the nexus between electricity access and development through graphical causal diagrams that allow us to capture, visualise and discuss the complexity and feedback loops. Based on this, we suggest guidelines for developing appropriate models able to include and simulate such complexities.
Our analysis confirms that electricity use is interconnected through complex causal relations with multiple dimensions of socio-economic development, viz. income generating activities, market production and revenues, household economy, local health and population, education, and habits and social networks. The causal diagrams can be seen as a first step of the conceptualization phase of model building, which aims at describing and under-standing the structure of a system. The presence of multiple uncertain parameters and complex diffusion mechanisms that describe the complex system under analysis suggests that systems-dynamic simulations can allow modelling such complex and dynamic relations, as well as dealing with the high uncertainties at stake, especially when coupled with stochastic approaches.
... The Prime Minister of the Indian Government, Narendra Modi, announced that India is committed to zero CO2 emissions by 2070 at the COP 26 meeting held in Glasgow in 2021 [11]. A draft version of the country's new National Electricity Plan (NEP) from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) was published for communal participation and includes an appraisal of the detailed electricity capacity expansion plans for 2032 [12]. The predicted expansion of generating power plants will be approximately 40%, from 623 GW to 866 GW. ...
... The hydro-electric power contribution of 69 GW is also expected to increase to 7% by 2032 as depicted in Figure 2. A nuclear power plant capacity of 22.5 GW will contribute 2.5% to the electricity pool [13]. A draft version of the country's new National Electricity Plan (NEP) from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) was published for communal participation and includes an appraisal of the detailed electricity capacity expansion plans for 2032 [12]. The predicted expansion of generating power plants will be approximately 40%, from 623 GW to 866 GW. ...
This review focuses on the Just Energy Transition (JET) policies of the BRICS member countries with the aim of finding lessons and possibly adopting some of the key energy policy aspects utilised in other countries as a benchmark for the South African context. We consider the present stage of JET in South Africa while being cognisant of the energy source mix supporting the electricity sector and the lifespan and condition of its power plants. An analysis of the energy mix revealed that all nations are dependent on electricity for energy, which is produced predominantly from fossil-fuelled power plants with high GHG emissions (concentrating on high CO2 emissions). It was concluded that some of the lessons learnt from the BRICS countries might be incorporated into a South African energy plan for the transition, with options and guidance for the formulation of policies. This study will attract a responsible, environmentally conscious audience that has the commitment and drive to combat global warming and curb climate change.
... A number of studies have found that electrification in developing countries depends to a varying extent on certain household characteristics, such as household size, income, education, age and gender of household head, employment and appliance possession (Aklin, Bayer, Harish, & Urpelainen, 2015;Kemmler, 2007;Louw, Conradie, Howells, & Dekenah, 2008;Rao & Reddy, 2007;Reddy & Srinivas, 2009), but also on external factors like quality of electricity, tariffs, connection costs, availability of appliances and system reliability (Prasad, 2006in Louw et al., 2008. ...
... income level, house ownership, appliance ownership (TV, fridge), the number of adults in the household and previous electricity use patterns, and negatively by having a female household head and upfront connection costs (as 'proxied' by the distance to the grid). The majority of these findings have been confirmed in a number of studies(Aklin et al., 2015;Gaunt, 2005;Kemmler, 2007;Louw et al., 2008;Rao & Reddy, 2007;Reddy & Srinivas, 2009).As far as variables capturing the household's integration in the community and participation in the project, only participation in an activity related to the administration or technical implementation of the project has a positive significant effect. However, this type of participation concerns only a small share of the population. ...
This thesis aims to explore how some of the findings from behavioural economics and the social capital literature can apply in the case of electricity access in developing countries with a focus on solar off-grid electrification. And specifically on solar home systems and solar hybrid mini-grid electrification in rural Guinea-Bissau. Specifically, I am drawing from studies looking at the role of discounting anomalies on technology adoption and recurring payments, the role of trust on technology adoption and the role of computational limitations and the use of simplification strategies on the accuracy of frequency and expenditure reporting in surveys. This exercise aims to inform electrification policy in developing countries, demonstrate instances where insights from behavioural economics and social capital can enrich our understanding of the underlying barriers and drivers of electrification access, but also demonstrate how some selected case studies can help to strengthen empirical findings from other contexts. Chapter 1 provides an introduction on the issues surrounding electrification access in developing countries and introduces the research motivation and the research objectives of this thesis. This chapter also discusses the relevant gaps in the literature, how this thesis attempts to address them and the contribution to knowledge. Finally, the research location is introduced. Chapter 2 presents the results of a stated preference study that uses a choice experiment to estimate willingness to pay for a solar home system, and the trade-off between different repayment schemes and maintenance responsibilities, in the region of Bafatá in Guinea-Bissau. Results suggest that preferences are driven both by income constraints as well as self-control problems, excessive discounting and self-reported trust for a number of actors. Chapter 3 explores the main determinants in the decision to connect to a solar hybrid mini-grid, in the semi-urban community of Bambadinca in Guinea-Bissau, with a focus on social capital as expressed in trust. Connections are driven largely by the socio-economic background of the households and prior energy use patterns. However, there is evidence that social capital as expressed in self-reported trust for one’s neighbours, also has a positive effect on connections through facilitating the informal expansion of the grid, whereby households use their neighbours’ infrastructure to connect to the service. Chapter 4 explores how the technology of prepaid meters can help researchers acquire more insight regarding the accuracy of survey responses and the response strategies used. More specifically, this chapter tests the accuracy of reported energy expenditure in surveys, when using differently defined recall periods, namely a ‘usual’ week versus a ‘specific’ (i.e. last) week. We compare real expenditure data for prepaid meters for electricity, from a solar hybrid mini-grid operating in the semi-urban community of Bambadinca in Guinea-Bissau, with answers from a survey where respondents are asked to state their expenditures, randomly, in different recall periods. Overall, our results show that respondents tend to over-report the level and frequency of their energy expenditures, but reporting is more accurate when the ‘specific’ period rather than when the ‘usual’ period is used. Chapter 5 investigates the role of self-control problems on prepayment patterns for electricity provided by a solar hybrid mini-grid installed in the semi-urban community of Bambadinca in Guinea-Bissau. Prepayment patterns are found to be mostly driven by income constraints and equipment in use however there is evidence that individuals with self-control problems as well as individuals being charged with an additional time-varying tariff (a higher tariff between 7pm to 12am) resort to smaller refill levels possibly as a strategy to consume less electricity at home. Chapter 6 provides concluding remarks.
... Energy poverty is not only common in rural areas, but also in the urbanizing parts of the developing countries. 2,3 Bringing energy to the populations in the developing world should therefore be of high priority on the political agenda. Most of the developing countries across Africa, Latin America, and Asia are geographically situated in sunny regions, which makes solar energy a potential domestic energy source in these countries. ...
... While the average subscriber reported being interested in using somewhat more electricity (4) during the first four or so months across the villages, interest declined significantly over time. By May, in Aira-Bhadiyar the average villager was somewhere between somewhat unlikely (2) and not at all (1). To gain greater insight into how exactly households used the energy services, we included openended questions in our endline survey to inquire about specific ways they believe program involvement affected them, how they might use additional access, and how they would change the way the program operates. ...
How can distributed solar power best meet the energy needs of nonelectrified rural communities? In collaboration with a local technology provider, we conduct a techno‐economic comparison of three different models of distributed solar power in rural India. We compare a centralized charging station with two solar microgrids, one based on prepaid electricity purchases and the other on a fixed monthly fee. Customers report higher levels of satisfaction and fewer technical problems with the microgrids, but the capital cost of the microgrids is much higher than that of the centralized charging station. The prepaid system exhibits poor economic performance because the customers spend very little money on electricity. These results suggest that new business models and technological innovations are needed to strike the right balance between customer needs and commercial viability. WIREs Energy Environ 2016, 5:640–648. doi: 10.1002/wene.209
This article is categorized under: Photovoltaics > Economics and Policy
Solar Heating and Cooling > Economics and Policy
Energy Research & Innovation > Systems and Infrastructure
... Whereas the existing studies have focused on rural-urban migration rates, housing challenges, and slum redevelopment [13,14], very few studies have attempted to identify the coping strategies of peri-urban dwellers. Recent works on periurban informal settlements have centered on areas of water supply, housing demand, health, poverty situation, selfgovernance, and trade-offs in ecosystems within peri-urban areas [11,[15][16][17][18][19]. Similarly, previous studies on slums in different parts of the world, such as the Barriadas of Lima, the Bustees of India, the Ghettos of North America, and the Ranchos of Venezuela, have failed to delve into the livelihood strategies adopted by these categories of urban residents [20]. ...
Although the governance structure and environmental and agricultural impacts of peri-urban development in sub-Saharan Africa are known, little research attention has been given to understanding how residents of such areas are coping with their livelihoods in challenging locations in many urban centers in this region. This research aimed at investigating the livelihood coping strategies of peri-urban dwellers in Enugu, Southeast Nigeria. A cross-section survey involving two-stage cluster sampling technique was used in selecting 816 registered household heads who participated in this study. Questionnaire method was employed in the collection of data. Principal Component Analyses and multiple linear regression statistical tools were used to analyze the data. The results revealed the four main coping strategies to include home-based business (49.95%), retail trading (16.50%), domestic working (16.34%), and street trading (12.03%). Factors that influenced the identified coping strategies of these dwellers include age, sex, takeoff capital, type of housing unit, and space availability. This study implies that contemporary urban planning strategies should take cognizance and integrate these coping strategies into modern urban planning practices and policy making. This is vital in ensuring that the contributions of this category of urban residents to the gross domestic product are adequately harnessed for national development.
... Given the data limitations and lack of digital infrastructure in informal settlements, similar studies in these contexts have largely focused on their electrification [80] and provision of energy access [81]. However, recent work has begun to focus on localized case studies to predict the impact of various building materials and vernacular architectural design on thermal comfort. ...
Cities are critical to meeting our sustainable energy goals. Informal settlement redevelopment programs represent an opportunity to improve living conditions and curb increasing demand for active cooling. We introduce an energy modeling framework for informal settlements to investigate how building design decisions influence the onset of heat stress and energy-intensive cooling demand. We show that occupants of tropically-located informal settlements are most vulnerable to prolonged heat stress year-round. Up to 98% of annual heat stress exposure can be mitigated by improving the building envelope. We find a universal solution (cool roofs) that reduces up to 91% of annual heat stress exposure. Finally, we show how proposed redevelopment building schemes could worsen thermal conditions of dwellers and further increase urban energy demand. Our results underscore how building design affects human well-being and highlight potential near-term and long-term pathways for reducing energy-intensive cooling demand for 800+ million informal settlement dwellers worldwide.
... Rural electrification through renewable energy sources is key objective for socio-economic sustainable development of remote communities [1,2]. Rural electrification can be achieved through integration of local sustainable energy sources by operating as micro-grid (MG) [3]. ...
Appropriate power management strategy for DC microgrid (MG) is required for integrating intermittent renewable energy sources and providing controllable power flow from dispatchable sources during load dynamics. In this work, DC MG with photovoltaic – battery - micro hydro power plant (MHPP) is considered. It is critical to have sustainable power flow in a DC MG. In considered DC MG, due to technical constraints (e.g. mechanical response time of MHPP, C-rate limitation of battery, PV intermittency), load dynamics cannot be compensated instantaneously. In this work, an innovative supervised power management scheme (SPMS) is proposed for sustainable power flow distribution within the DC MG sources against aforementioned supply constraints. The presented SPMS strategically operates MHPP of DC MG in such a way that sustainable power flow can be managed from dispatchable sources with maximum participation of MHPP during load transients with due consideration of C-rate limitations of battery storage. The effectiveness of proposed SPMS for MHPP centered DC MG is tested for load dynamics, and results are validated through hardware-in-loop experimental system. Moreover, performance of proposed SPMS, to maintain the stable power flow control of DC MG during transient load, is investigated with voltage stability analysis.
... As a result, fewer, if any, initiatives are created to provide technical services in slums and other places where the urban poor live. For example, many developing countries have rural electrification agencies dedicated to providing access to electricity in rural areas, whereas the cities' slums are largely ignored (Aklin, Bayer, Harish, & Urpelainen, 2015;Bernard, 2010;Brass, Carley, MacLean, & Baldwin, 2012;Cabraal, Barnes, & Agarwal, 2005;Putti, 2011). Assumptions that all urban dwellers have access to electricity prevail, thus justifying attention to rural electrification. ...
We developed a contextualized model to predict the use of technology among the urban poor. Based on the core idea that, in developing countries, the urban poor face different challenges from those of the rural poor, we argued that five key facilitating conditions (FC)—namely, infrastructure, technical and support services, legal and regulatory framework, financial factors and affordability, and self-efficacy—are the central drivers of both non-instrumental and instrumental use of mobile devices. Situated in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), these FC were found to be important drivers in our study conducted among 396 mobile phone users in a poor urban area in Malaysia. In addition to extending a key UTAUT construct to an important context, our results have important practical implications, in that, to increase non-instrumental and instrumental use, careful attention should be given to co-development of mobile phone friendly policies pertaining to FC in developing countries.
... Moreover, we found that rural migrants perform better compared to urban migrants in one of the input variables of the RM, namely in the availability of electricity backup. On the one side, this can be interpreted as a sign of increased resilience but also a sign for the higher necessity of having electricity backup since electricity is unreliable [75]. ...
Urbanization proceeds globally and is often driven by migration. Simultaneously, cities face severe exposure to environmental hazards such as floods and heatwaves posing threats to millions of urban households. Consequently, fostering urban households' resilience is imperative, yet often impeded by the lack of its accurate assessment. We developed a structural equation model to quantify households' resilience, considering their assets, housing, and health properties. Based on a household survey (n = 1872), we calculate the resilience of households in Pune, India with and without migration biography and compare different subgroups. We further analyze how households are exposed to and affected by floods and heatwaves. Our results show that not migration as such but the type of migration, particularly, the residence zone at the migration destination (formal urban or slum) and migration origin (urban or rural) provide insights into households' resilience and affectedness by extreme weather events. While on average, migrants in our study have higher resilience than non-migrants, the subgroup of rural migrants living in slums score significantly lower than the respective non-migrant cohort. Further characteristics of the migration biography such as migration distance, time since arrival at the destination, and the reasons for migration contribute to households' resilience. Consequently, the opposing generalized notions in literature of migrants either as the least resilient group or as high performers, need to be overcome as our study shows that within one city, migrants are found both at the top and the bottom of the resilience range. Thus, we recommend that policymakers include migrants' biographies when assessing their resilience and when designing resilience improvement interventions to help the least resilient migrant groups more effectively.
... A considerable amount of research has been done on electricity theft detection (ETD) [58,59,60,61,62,63]. Traditional techniques for identifying electricity theft are based on human efforts [64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71]. Inspections are performed by technical staff who compare the anomalous meter's electricity consumption pattern with the normal ones [21,72,73,74,75,76,77,78]. ...
... More than 900 million people worldwide live in poor urban settlements which can mainly be found in cities of the global south [1]. India has a significant number of their urban population living in low-income housing characterised by overcrowding, poor infrastructure, lack of ventilation, light, sanitation and water-supply facilities [2]. These living conditions are further aggravated by rising temperatures due to global warming having a serious detrimental effect on people's health with increased risk of sickness and mortality, mental impairment, reduced productivity and economic losses [3]. ...
This paper presents post-occupancy evaluation of low-income houses that have been built through the DMU: Square Mile India Programme in Ahmedabad, India. Questionnaire and interviews were conducted which elicited information on respondents' socio-cultural and environmental experiences in the new houses compared to the existing dwellings in the community. Findings include: 1. increased expectations and higher demands for space and facilities in the new houses, 2. discontent with integrated courtyard/ open spaces, 3. prioritising flood protection over environmental quality and thermal comfort conditions in the existing houses and 4. Significant change in the perception of social status of families in the new homes. The findings highlight residents' need for adequate sleeping area, thermal comfort, safety from animals and security. These aspects must be critically considered in future design of similar houses. The paper produces empirical evidence on users' perception that will provide better knowledge and understanding to the designer and policy-makers to identify important factors to improve residents' quality of life in a low-income housing context.
... Hence, we propose making more profound studies regarding how to satisfy the swiftly increasing demand of electricity in India by minimum growths in coal consumption and coal-related CO 2 emissions, and accordingly to determine the peak of CO 2 emissions in India's coal sector. Additionally, India has been experiencing an unprecedentedly rapidbut not well-managed-urbanization, causing severe deficits of urban infrastructure and energy service as well as unregulated increases of urban slums and census towns [198,246]. According to the current literature, a growing urban population and a rising urbanization level tend to drive up CO 2 emissions in developing countries [24,25]. ...
... While these works provide significant insights into the thermal comfort dynamics in India, results have yet to be linked to early design decision-making in the important context of informal settlement redevelopment. Moreover, the body of research on informal settlements and energy sustainability has largely been focused on supply side dynamics and provision [48,49]. However, the demand side energy dynamics of informal settlements play an equal role in the sustainability equation as these communities are rapidly changing as part of redevelopment efforts. ...
... A study conducted in five slum settlements using serviced and non-serviced settlements in the state of Gujarat in India showed that energy provision improves productivity and enables slum dwellers to change their ambitions (Parikh et al., 2012). Interventions such as provision of basic services increase productivity and enable slum inhabitants to then emphasise higher level aspirations (Aklin, Bayer, Harish, & Urpelainen, 2015;Parikh et al., 2012). It also tends to be associated with creating formal tenure that unlocks the ability of householders to upgrade their own homes. ...
The need to improve slum housing is a major urban planning agenda, especially in Africa and Asia. This article addresses whether it seems feasible to do this whilst helping achieve the 1.5 °C agenda, which requires zero carbon power along with enabling the Sustainable Development Goals. Survey data from Jakarta and Addis Ababa on the metabolism and liveability of slums are used to illustrate these issues. The article shows that this is possible due to advances in community-based distributed infrastructure that enable community structures to be retained whilst improving physical conditions. The urban planning implications are investigated to enable these ‘leapfrog’ technologies and a more inclusive approach to slums that enables in situ redevelopment instead of slum clearance, and which could be assisted through climate financing.
... In recent times, this has included access to basic services, such as electricity [1]. In the so-called developing countries, most remote rural areas do not have access to electricity grids (an example is India, that had up to 400 million people without access to electricity in 2011 [2], concentrated in the poorest states of the country [3]). Photovoltaic rural electrification (PVRE) represents, in many cases, the only hope of accessing electricity [4]. ...
In decentralised rural electrification through solar home systems, private companies and promoting institutions are faced with the problem of deploying maintenance structures to operate and guarantee the service of the solar systems for long periods (ten years or more). The problems linked to decentralisation, such as the dispersion of dwellings, difficult access and maintenance needs, makes it an arduous task. This paper proposes an innovative design tool created ad hoc for photovoltaic rural electrification based on a real photovoltaic rural electrification program in Morocco as a special case study. The tool is developed from a mathematical model comprising a set of decision variables (location, transport, etc.) that must meet certain constraints and whose optimisation criterion is the minimum cost of the operation and maintenance activity assuming an established quality of service. The main output of the model is the overall cost of the maintenance structure. The best location for the local maintenance headquarters and warehouses in a given region is established, as are the number of maintenance technicians and vehicles required.
... Whereas the emergence and challenges of slum are often associated with the dark side of modernization, which is also a consequence of market failures, Fox (2014) argues that different historical and political dynamics give rise to the recent trajectories in Africa. Recent works on slums have looked at different aspects of the challenges including energy, water supply, sanitation, health, housing demand, and poverty situation ( Parikh et al., 2015;Stoler et al., 2015;Aklin et al., 2015;Tumwebaze et al., 2014;Thorn et al., 2015;Patel et al., 2014;Gulyani et al., 2014;Ahmad et al., 2013). There seems to be a consensus that wide infrastructure gap creates preconditions for the deteriorating conditions in slums (United Nations, 2011). ...
In Ghana, unplanned and spontaneous urbanization has trapped many in slum dwellings with its attendant poverty, insecurity, and poor housing and general environmental conditions. Slum dwellers’ choices of livelihood activities are restricted under various socio-economic and planning constraints. Using mixed methods, this paper explored the conditions under which slum dwellers can maximize the prospects of their environment and minimize the challenges therein. The findings
indicate that slum dwellers have diversity of livelihood assets and potentials, yet limited access to planned adaptation remains a main challenge. Many dwellers result to autonomous “supplementary occupations” to cope with the challenges of urbanization. It is therefore imperative to redefine the mandate of urban planning, as a response to spontaneous urbanization, and to
develop a tool for sustainable livelihood at the local level.
To address issues of non-payment, high costs, and theft, paying a fixed fee for electricity is common among many developing countries. We use a conjoint experiment to study electricity billing preferences among urban and rural communities in Uttar Pradesh, India. We find that 59.5% of respondents (95% CI: 58.2%–60.9%) prefer consumption-based tariffs as opposed to fixed fee ones, favoring lower base charges among a number of factors. We additionally use Bayesian Additive Regression Trees to test for heterogeneous treatment effects. Respondents with more appliances, using more hours of electricity, and who live in rural areas with meters prefer consumption-based plans with lower base rates. Our results suggest that policy reforms should move beyond fixed rate schemes especially if respondents would accept higher unit tariffs with improved service.
How beneficial is basic energy access – typically lighting and mobile charging – for rural households? Despite research on the economic impacts of basic energy access, few studies have investigated how it changes household behavior. Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial in rural Uttar Pradesh, India, which identifies the behavioral impacts of providing solar lanterns to households that normally rely on kerosene as their primary source of lighting. Eighty-nine of the 184 households participating in the study were given a free, high-quality solar lantern. Comparing changes in responses from the baseline questionnaire and an endline questionnaires administered six months later, we find that the lanterns reduced energy expenditures, improved lighting, improved satisfaction with lighting, more use of lighting for domestic activities (e.g., reading), and improved satisfaction with lighting for domestic activities. Overall, our results show that basic energy access can offer substantial benefits within the households, even if broader rural economic transformation is not plausible.
Using comprehensive data on power generation and energy access, we explore associations between coal-fired power generation and household electrification. We find that, although there is a strong between-country correlation between coal-fired power generation capacity and electricity access, the correlation disappears when we focus on within-country variation and control for secular trends. Further, statistical analyses using dynamic panel models show no evidence for the effect of coal-fired generation capacity on electrification rates. These results suggest that increases in coal-fired power generation may not have played an important role in promoting rural electrification in recent decades, calling into question the relationship between coal-fired power generation and energy access. The findings also imply that rural electrification can advance without the greenhouse gas emissions from coal combustion in electricity generation.
Rural electrification has the potential to transform rural lives and livelihoods by allowing households to use a variety of electric appliances. However, empirical evidence on how rural electrification translates into appliance ownership and usage remains understudied across contexts. Here we use data from the 2014–2015 ACCESS survey in six energy-poor states of India to understand the dynamics of appliance stock accumulation as a function of time since electrification. We find that, controlling for a number of variables, each additional year of electricity access leads to: 1) incrementally higher ownership rates of more power-intensive appliances, 2) increased likelihood of a higher total stock of appliances, and 3) increased probability of owning key appliances, especially TVs, fans, and pressure cookers. These results may help to explain why short-term impact evaluations sometimes find weak evidence for benefits of rural electrification; they also underscore the importance of realistic forecasts of energy demand growth over time after rural electrification.
As of 2017, the global the net CO2 emissions stand at 35.7 gigatonnes per annum- the highest ever registered. This is an alarming statistic given the current state of climate change. In the past century, our world’s carbon footprint has risen significantly, and at accelerated rates. These recent changes in the climate patterns have only spurred the policymakers and governments to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. While each of the 17 Global Goals introduced have separate agendas, they all have a unifying theme- to tackle climate change. An important goal that directly relates to carbon emissions is SDG 7, to “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” (McCollum et al, 2017). This is an ambitious target because of its dual aims- ensuring clean energy, and for everyone. On one hand, almost 300 million people in India still lack access to electricity, the most efficient of the fuels used (Banerjee et al, 2015). In fact, energy itself is not a universal commodity. Various previous papers such as Foster (2000), Gol (2001), Pachauri et al (2004, 2008), and Barnes (1996, 2010) highlight, that there are people who are ‘energy poor’ (which is different from being classified as income poor). On the other hand, since energy use and global warming are interrelated, encouraging more combustion of fuels by providing people access to energy will further risk the planet into greater climatic adversities. Therefore, if we intend to provide energy to those who are energy poor, then we must also address the gap between energy access and global warming.
While rural electrification has been a high priority for many governments in the developing world, the factors that make individual households more likely to pay for a connection have received insufficient attention. In particular, many studies have dealt with the role of affordability of grid connections, but they have generally avoided studying the effects of service quality. Estimating the effect of quality on willingness of potential customers to pay is a difficult task because of self-selection – if quality is important, those in higher quality service areas are more likely to have a connection. Using household data from rural India, we estimate a Heckman selection model to deal with this issue and find a substantial impact of quality on willingness to pay for a connection in India. The results suggest that improving the quality of connections is critical to improving access.
Strengthening the influence of India in the Asian region and in the world requires for resorting of the modernization experience of this country, including the development of its energy sector. India today is among the top ten countries to generate electricity per capita. At the same time, both traditional sources of energy production coexist in India (using the muscular strength of man and animals) with the conditions for the development of modern energy infrastructure through foreign investments. The article attempts to trace the main stages of the formation and development of energy industry in India; the modern state of energy is analyzed and plans for its development are considered. The research is based on a complex of traditional methods and approaches based on the principle of scientific objectivity and systemic method used in research in the framework of international relations and political science. For more than a century of history of the development of energy sector in India significant success has been achieved. Starting with the electrification of large cities and industrial enterprises due to foreign investments in the colonial period, India, after gaining the independence, set the task of developing its own infrastructure, electrifying the countryside and providing the industry with energy resources. The greatest progress in the development of electric power and nuclear energy was made. Indian economic growth will increase India’s energy needs and quadruple the demand for electricity over the next 25 years. For this, India needs to solve the problems of energy efficiency, energy complex management, lack of standards and energy imports, as well as actively introduce alternative energy sources and move to clean electricity (increased use of water resources and solar energy), which can be done through the development of Russian -Indian cooperation.
Electricity is an important component of socio-economic development, but most studies of household electricity access focus exclusively on the presence or absence of a connection. Here we reach beyond connectivity by examining the relationship between various dimensions of the quality of electricity supply and a household’s subjective satisfaction with their electricity or lighting situation. Studying the results from a survey of 8,568 households in six large, energy-poor states from northern, central and eastern India, we find that household satisfaction responds strongly to the average hours of electricity available on a typical day. The positive effect of increasing the number of hours per day by one standard deviation on satisfaction is almost as large as that of electrifying a non-electrified household. These findings underscore the importance of moving from counting electricity connections to enhancing the quality of electricity supply.
A control strategy for multiple Photovoltaic generators (PVG) operating in parallel in a grid connected microgrid is evaluated. The microgrid considered is a radial network with appreciable R/X ratio and when it is isolated from the utility grid, the PVG’s operate in the voltage-frequency control mode because of absence of a storage or a diesel generator unit. It is also observed that conventional P-f and Q-v droop control method fails to deliver correct power references when the network impedance is more resistive, and thereby a PQFD droop control is proposed to achieve an error free power sharing. Seamless operation from the grid connected mode to the microgrid mode and vice-versa is achieved with the help of the derivative control which also helps in the alleviation of sluggish response when an Induction motor (IM) load is switched on in the isolated microgrid. A synchronization procedure is also described to connect the microgrid to the utility grid which guarantees efficient power transfer from PVG’s when they switch from the droop control mode to the MPPT mode. The efficacy of these controllers is tested in both Microgrid and the grid connected mode and during transition. The controller gains used in the paper have been obtained with the help of a small signal analysis of the system considered.
Many people in the developing
world lack access to energy
sources such as oil, gas, and
electricity, and still depend on
biomass. The problems of supplying them with modern fuels appear daunting, but practical and financially sustainable solutions exist. Energy Markets do not function efficiently in many developing countries, particularly in rural areas, where nearly 2 billion people do not have electricity or access to modern fuels such as oil and gas.
The problem is likely to worsen in coming decades. The population of the developing world is expected to increase by 3 billion over the next forty years, and energy demand per capita will grow rapidly. As countries’ economic development proceeds, their per capita consumption of commercial energy increases. Per capita consumption of commercial
energy in the United States, for example, is 80 times higher than in Africa,
40 times higher than in South Asia, 15 times higher than in East Asia, and 8 times higher than in Latin America.
A two-player model is established in order to examine the effects of environmental policy instruments, budget control, and bribery on decision making of local government and the firms. With or without bribery, the central government can always promote the abatement input by stipulating a higher marginal budget reward for the local government. Bribery can cause policy failure for some environmental instruments such as fines and local fine shares. In a clean society, a higher local fine share or higher fines will unambiguously increase pollution abatement. In a corrupt society, a higher local fine share or higher fines may reduce pollution abatement. With or without bribery, a stricter emission standard has an ambiguous effect on pollution abatement.
Energy is a crucial input to promote socioeconomic development. In Bangladesh, about 96 million people (59%) do not have access to electricity and 143 million people (88%) still depend on biomass for cooking. The urban poor living in slum areas with lack of access to clean and modern sources of energy have not been addressed comprehensively. The main objective of this study is to identify the barriers faced by the urban poor in the slum areas of Dhaka in accessing different fuels and provide specific recommendations to overcome the barriers to enable energy access. The study is mainly based on field survey covering 185 households of the four major slum areas of Dhaka, literature review, and stakeholder interviews. Many barriers have been identified through this research where urban poor face problems in accessing legal energy services due to illegal settlement, lack of explicit policy on energy and housing, lack of dedicated institution, the pervasive role of Mastaans, poor infrastructure and lack of monitoring and evaluating system. Barriers specific recommendations are also suggested based on the experiences from the field visit and the best practices outside Bangladesh are also identified.
Who blames corruption for the poor enforcement of environmental laws? The answer to this question is important since corruption is an important reason why environmental policies are not properly enforced, but previous studies of environmental public opinion do not address the issue. We analyze data from a survey fielded in Brazil in June 2012, immediately preceding the Rio+20 environmental summit. We test hypotheses on income, education, and perception of corruption as a cause of poor enforcement of environmental policy. We find that wealthy individuals are more likely to associate corruption with enforcement failure than poorer Brazilians. However, education is not associated with the belief that corruption is a primary cause of enforcement failure. These results suggest that since wealthy Brazilians have a higher exposure to corruption because of their interaction with government officials, they understand the role of corruption in policy failure. Conversely, the kind of general information that education offers does not raise concern about the role of corruption in environmental policy. The results have important implications particularly in democratic societies, where governments have stronger incentives to address the problem if concerned publics associate corruption with enforcement failure.
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The paradigm for providing affordable electricity for the world's poor—power for development—has begun to change. Historically, centralized governments built large consolidated power plants and distribution and transmission lines with the ultimate goal of providing electricity to all of their citizens. It has become increasingly common in recent decades, however, for donors, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), firms, and communities to collaborate with governments to develop small-scale localized energy systems known as distributed generation (DG) either as complements or alternatives to centralized operations. DG programs have been implemented around the world but with a mixed record of success. Based on an analysis of the existing case study literature, we examine DG program goals and outcomes, identifying major factors that affect these outcomes, including appropriately chosen technology, adequate financing and payment arrangements, ongoing end users' involvement, and supportive national policies. We...
Rural electrification is an integral component of poverty alleviation and rural growth of a nation. In India, electricity has not played effective role in the socio-economic growth of village. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is increasing with 8% where as contribution of agriculture sector is 1.9%. Government of India has ambitious target of providing electricity to all villages by 2008 and all rural households by 2012. Steps are already initiated with Rural Electric Corporation, Rural Electricity Supply Technology mission, State Electricity Boards, Reforms in Power sector. An attempt has been made in this paper to assess the features of rural electrification in India and the feasibility of Photovoltaic Solar Home Systems (PV SHS).
This review utilizes the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) working definition of "productive uses of energy," which states "in the context of providing modern energy services in rural areas, a productive use of energy is one that involves the application of energy de-rived mainly from renewable resources to create goods and/or services either directly or indirectly for the production of income or value." The definition reflects the shift toward the aspirations of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Traditionally, the productive uses of energy have been rather narrowly defined. The focus has been on the direct impact of energy use on gross domestic product (GDP) and the im-portance of motive power for agriculture. This conventional view has some utility in understanding the nature of development at the national and regional level; however, in order to respond to international development goals while maintaining pace with an ever-evolving understanding of what development is, it is important to consider how this traditional thinking may be augmented. The earlier thinking about the productive uses of energy needs to be updated with an enhanced understanding of the tremendous impact that energy services have on education, health, and gender equality. Indeed, a refined understanding of energy use has important public policy implications because scarce resources may be guided into investments that may achieve the desired national or international development goals.
The objective of this paper is to examine the nature of India's federal system, the reforms that have occurred over the last ten years, and what remains to be done. We begin by briefly describing the key federal institutions in India, focusing particularly on the mechanisms for center-state transfers. These transfers are quite large, and are the major explicit method for dealing with inequalities across constituent units of the federation. We then examine the evidence on how India's political economy has affected the practical workings of the transfer mechanisms. We next describe recent and potential reforms of the center-state transfer system, in the context of evidence of widening interstate economic disparities. This is followed by a consideration of broader actual and possible reforms in India's federal institutions, including tax assignments and local government reform. We conclude by relating our discussion to other dimensions of economic reform in India.
Some 40% of the world’s urban poor—living predominantly in informal settlements—lack access to legal electricity. Urban upgradation programmes, if they exist, prioritize water supply over electrification since water is nonsubstitutable and more essential for sustaining human life. Illegal electricity—albeit unreliable, expensive and dangerous—is also already widely available in informal settlements. I share the experiences of the Self-Employed Women’s Association and Saath —two nongovermental organizations (NGOs) based in India—of participating in a multiple-stakeholder propoor electrification programme. By 2008 close to 100 000 homes had been electrified in the city of Ahmedabad and the programme is currently being replicated in smaller cities in Gujarat and in the neighbouring state of Rajasthan. I use academic literature on urban infrastructure provision and politics, project reports and evaluations, pricing surveys, and interviews with electricity utility and NGO staff to analyze the programme for its impacts upon access, tariffs, consumption patterns, quality of service, and security of land tenure. The findings indicate that NGOs can be very effective as intermediaries between utilities, municipalities, and urban poor communities. However, scaling up such programmes will require strong state involvement in developing a policy framework to facilitate NGO participation in the design and implementation of propoor electrification activities, and in the energy reform process in general.
This book deals with the system, institutions, and outcomes from the interplay of political and economic forces in Indian federalism. It significantly broadens the conceptual framework for analysing Indian federalism by exploring political elements and institutions and their strategic interaction with fiscal variables. The book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the political and economic theories of federalism, dimensions of federal governance, the historical background of Indian federalism, and the issues of bargaining, control, and commitment. The second section examines Centre-state economic relations and efficiency and equity implications of the constitutional arrangements and their actual working. The final part explores the various political-economic issues associated with intergovernmental reform.
Sometime in the next 20 to 30 years, developing countries in Asia and Africa are likely to cross a historic threshold, joining
Latin America in having a majority of urban residents. The urban demographic transformation is described here, with an emphasis
on estimates and forecasts of urban population aggregates. To provide policy-makers with useful scientific guidance in the
upcoming urban era, demographic researchers will need to refine their data sets to include spatial factors as well as urban
vital rates and to make improvements to forecasting methods currently in use.
This paper applies an ordered logit model to fuel choices and patterns of cooking fuels in urban Indian households. A large microeconomic dataset is employed to carry out the analysis. The results show that in addition to income, there are several socio-demographic factors such as education and sex of the head of the household, which are important in determining household fuel choice. In addition, the model performs better when information on the shares of different fuels in total useful cooking energy are included, and this suggests that it is important to incorporate multiple fuel use patterns in modeling fuel choice in the Indian context.
The plan of making urban India slum-free faced serious diffi culties in the Eleventh Plan period and it looks like these will persist in the Twelfth Plan period as well. This article points out that the schemes in operation lack a reliable framework for identifying non-tenable slums and legitimate slum households that are entitled to get dwelling units. Further, the design of the Rajiv Awas Yojana betrays a big-city bias to attract global capital, and there is no clear road map for its time-bound implementation.
This book demonstrates the close relationship between religion and democracy in India. Religious practice creates ties among citizens that can generate positive and democratic political outcomes. In pursuing this line of inquiry the book questions a dominant strand in some contemporary social sciences - that a religious denomination (Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, etc.) is sufficient to explain the relationship between religion and politics or that religion and democracy are antithetical to each other. The book makes a strong case for studying religious practice and placing that practice in the panoply of other social practices and showing that religious practice is positively associated with democracy.
This paper investigates the extent to which slum notification, a tenure formalization policy that officially recognises settlements as slums and ensures the occupancy rights of the residents, has stimulated housing investment by the households in India. In using a nationally representative data set, propensity score methods are employed to reduce selection bias. This paper finds that given the observed household characteristics adjusted by propensity scores, slum notification will increase the average amount of money spent on housing construction, though the proportion of households who would improve their houses is estimated to be higher in non-formalized settlements. The findings suggest that not only formalizing slums but also supporting self-help efforts by the residents of non-formalized slums would be effective for improving their housing conditions.
This analysis of the role of government in eradicating India's rural poverty raises a whole series of crucial contemporary issues relating to the state, its degree of autonomy in the developing world and the problems of effecting genuine redistributive reform. The particular importance of the book is that it focuses attention on the nature of ruling political parties as an important factor influencing the success or failure of redistributive and welfare politics in a democratic capitalist setting. Dr Kohli compares in detail three state-level Indian governments of the late seventies: Communist-ruled West Bengal, Karnataka under the Congress Party, and Uttar Pradesh under the Janata Party. Comparing these in terms of their success in redistributing agricultural land and creating employment for the rural poor, the author argues cogently that well-organised, left-of-centre parties in government - like that in West Bengal - are the most effective in implementing reform.
In the developing world, households often stack multiple fuels. In the case of India, they use both kerosene and electricity for lighting while cooking with both LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) and traditional biomass. Existing scholarship on fuel stacking largely relies on small surveys and does not investigate change over time. We leverage the nationally representative NSS (National Sample Survey) of India in 1987 and 2010, finding that fuel stacking is decreasing in lighting, as people substitute electricity for kerosene, but increasing in cooking, as LPG does not replace traditional biomass. We also exploit a two-stage statistical model to analyze individual household's decision of fuel stacking. The most important finding is that, while a high household income reduces fuel stacking for lighting, it no longer does so in 2010 for cooking. The main policy implication of the study is that much more aggressive efforts are needed to deal with problems associated with biofuels, such as indoor air pollution, than to induce the switch from kerosene to electricity. The statistical model offers a considerable improvement over existing alternatives in the literature on household energy access.
Based on a survey of 3000 households, covering both authorized and informal connections to electricity, the paper examines the key drivers of the demand for regulated electricity service in 4 slums of Mumbai. The methodology builds on the typical slum context, where informal connections are easily obtained and widespread. WTP for safe, authorized electricity provision is estimated through both “stated” preferences and “revealed” ones extrapolated from present electricity demand. WTP estimates are further validated using propensity score matching. The comparative analysis confirms that affordability (of both the initial investment and the increased consumption fees) is a primary barrier to regularization. Additionally, lack of house ownership status or address proof, precarious house construction and, possibly, pressure from local leaders all play an important role in choosing an electricity supplier. Policies to reduce the prevalence of informal connections should also address contextual issues like the intricacy of Mumbai's governance and social exclusion.
That the promise of "free power" to agriculture wins elections was demonstrated in the 2004 elections to Parliament and assemblies (Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra). There is a need to understand why farmers are demanding quality power and yet not willing to pay for it. This paper, by three pumpset farmers from Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, is an exploration in this direction. It explores the spread of pumpset irrigation across the country and the reasons for the farmers' refusal to pay for the power they are consuming: a deliberate neglect of surface irrigation by planners and decision-makers, disparity vis-a-vis canal farmers, increasing input costs and declining incomes. The authors are, however, worried that the present trend in power consumption in agriculture (already covering 58 per cent of irrigated area) is ecologically unsustainable and ruinous to farmers, power utilities and the economy as a whole. A series of measures are suggested to overcome the crisis situation.
The study examines cointegrating relationship between energy consumption, urbanization and economic activity for India using threshold cointegration tests complemented by ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) bounds testing approach and Johansen–Juselius maximum likelihood procedure for cointegration for the period 1971–2008. Considering the rapid urbanization and growing energy demand in India in recent years, this study is highly pertinent and presents some important results which should guide the policy makers to develop long-term energy and urban policies in India. Threshold cointegration tests suggest the existence of long-run relationship among the variables having endogenous structural breaks or regime shifts. Toda–Yamamoto version of the Granger causality tests indicate unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to economic activity and economic activity to urbanization. The article elaborately discusses the possible reasons behind its empirical findings and prescribes ways and means to enhance energy supply. The findings of the study are critical and warn the need of designing and executing long-term energy and economic policies which judiciously address the issues of incessant urban migration in India to achieve a sustainable growth path. The study also advocates that the consequences of rapid urbanization should be an integral part of long-term energy planning in India.
Most studies on household energy choices have considered income and education as suitable proxies for socio-cultural contexts, primarily because the available data on household energy is from census surveys which are mainly household consumption surveys, not focused energy surveys. Acknowledging the existing data constraints, a more focussed household energy survey was designed for rural India with the aim of better understanding determinants of current energy use patterns, energy choices, to measure the impacts of these factors, and importantly, arrive at key policy insights. This paper revisits the definition of access to include for reliability and quality going beyond conventional understanding. It also relooks at the role of gender in household energy choices. Having established that apart from income, socio-cultural factors may have a greater role in determining household energy choices, the model results indicate electricity access would have a positive impact on cooking energy choices only after meeting a minimum threshold requirement. As women move towards more formal employment, the odds of choosing cleaner fuels increase significantly. Thus, while macro-policies may provide important guidelines and the necessary framework, implementation strategies need to be designed at the local level through a participatory approach making energy an integral part of the development paradigm.
Contesting the Indian City features a collection of cutting-edge empirical studies that offer insights into issues of politics, equity, and space relating to urban development in modern India. Features studies that serve to deepen our theoretical understandings of the changes that Indian cities are experiencing. Examines how urban redevelopment policy and planning, and reforms of urban politics and real estate markets, are shaping urban spatial change in India. The first volume to bring themes of urban political reform, municipal finance, land markets, and real estate industry together in an international publication.
In this paper we investigate the co-movement and the causality relationship between energy consumption as well as electricity consumption and the HDI (human development index) using as a proxy of human well-being and by including energy prices as an additional variable, in fifteen developing countries for the period 1988 to 2008. Recently developed tests for the panel unit root, heterogeneous panel cointegration, and panel-based error correction models are employed.
The empirical results support the neutrality hypothesis in the short-term, regards total energy or electricity consumption, implying an absence of causality running in either direction. In the short term, energy as well as electricity consumption has a neutral effect on the HDI.
In the long-term the findings provide a clear support of a negative cointegration relationship between energy consumption and the HDI. While a positive cointegration relationship exists between electricity consumption and HDI.
A 1% increase in per capita energy consumption reduces the HDI by 0.8% and, a 1% increase in per capita electricity consumption increases the HDI by 0.22%. Moreover, a 1% increase in energy price reduces the HDI by around 0.11%.
This study thus provides empirical evidence of long-run and causal relationships between energy consumption and the HDI for our sample of countries; supporting the assertion that lack or limited access to modern energy services could hamper economic and human development prospects of countries and underpins all the MDGs (millennium development goals).
In this paper we investigate the co-movement and the causality relationship between energy consumption as well as electricity consumption and the HDI (human development index) using as a proxy of human well-being and by including energy prices as an additional variable, in fifteen developing countries for the period 1988 to 2008. Recently developed tests for the panel unit root, heterogeneous panel cointegration, and panel-based error correction models are employed.
The empirical results support the neutrality hypothesis in the short-term, regards total energy or electricity consumption, implying an absence of causality running in either direction. In the short term, energy as well as electricity consumption has a neutral effect on the HDI.
In the long-term the findings provide a clear support of a negative cointegration relationship between energy consumption and the HDI. While a positive cointegration relationship exists between electricity consumption and HDI.
A 1% increase in per capita energy consumption reduces the HDI by 0.8% and, a 1% increase in per capita electricity consumption increases the HDI by 0.22%. Moreover, a 1% increase in energy price reduces the HDI by around 0.11%.
This study thus provides empirical evidence of long-run and causal relationships between energy consumption and the HDI for our sample of countries; supporting the assertion that lack or limited access to modern energy services could hamper economic and human development prospects of countries and underpins all the MDGs (millennium development goals)
For India, sustainable strategy means one that is economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. This calls for rapid economic growth to deal with poverty and human development. However, the relatively meagre energy resources of the country pose a huge challenge. At the same time concern for climate change has raised the bar on the use of the one energy resource that India has in some abundance, namely coal. India's strategy for sustainable development has to explore all options of reducing energy needs, enhancing efficiency of use of conventional energy resources and develop new and renewable sources. The paper identifies various technical options, their potential roles and alternative policy measures to realize them in a cost effective manner. Even for the same objectives different policy instruments are available and how one chooses a particular instrument is often critical for the success. Self-implementing incentive compatible policy that does not create vested interests that would get entrenched should be preferred.
As cities in developing countries grow and become more prosperous, energy use shifts from fuelwood to fuels like charcoal, kerosene, and coal, and, ultimately, to fuels such as liquid petroleum gas, and electricity. Energy use is not usually considered as a social issue. Yet, as this book demonstrates, the movement away from traditional fuels has a strong socio-economic dimension, as poor people are the last to attain the benefits of using modern energy. The result is that health risks from the continued use of wood fuel fall most heavily on the poor, and indoor pollution from wood stoves has its greatest effect on women and children who cook and spend much more of their time indoors. Barnes, Krutilla, and Hyde provide the first worldwide assessment of the energy transition as it occurs in urban households, drawing upon data collected by the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP). From 1984-2000, the program conducted over 25,000 household energy surveys in 45 cities spanning 12 countries and 3 continents. Additionally, GIS mapping software was used to compile a biomass database of vegetation patterns surrounding 34 cities. Using this rich set of geographic, biological, and socioeconomic data, the authors describe problems and policy options associated with each stage in the energy transition. The authors show how the poorest are most vulnerable to changes in energy markets and demonstrate how the collection of biomass fuel contributes to deforestation. Their book serves as an important contribution to development studies, and as a guide for policymakers hoping to encourage sustainable energy markets and an improved quality of life for growing urban populations.
India’s rural energy challenges are formidable with the presence of majority energy poor. In 2005, out of a rural population of 809 million, 364 million lacked access to electricity and 726 million to modern cooking fuels. This indicates low effectiveness of government policies and programs of the past, and need for a more effective approach to bridge this gap. However, before the government can address this challenge, it is essential that it gain a deeper insight into prevailing status of energy access and reasons for such outcomes. Toward this, we perform a critical analysis of the dynamics of energy access status with respect to time, income and regions, and present the results as possible indicators of effectiveness of policies/programmes. Results indicate that energy deprivations are highest for poorest households with 93% depending on biomass for cooking and 62% lacking access to electricity. The annual growth rates in expansion in energy access are gradually declining from double digit growth rates experienced 10 years back to just around 4% in recent years. Regional variations indicate, on an average, cooking access levels were 5.3 times higher in top five states compared to bottom five states whereas this ratio was 3.4 for electricity access.
Urbanization is currently a major force in tropical land use transitions as economic activities aggregate in urban centers, particularly in Asia. This paper examines relationships among urbanization, household energy source, and forest cover at the state level in India using available census, survey, and remote sensing analysis from the 1990s and 2000s. Central questions include (1) how rapidly are urban and rural households switching from traditional to modern fuel sources; and (2) what are the consequences of changing household energy sources for fuelwood demand and forest cover. Country-wide, 30 and 78% of urban and rural households respectively used fuelwood for cooking in 1993. In urban households, the percentage decreased to 22% by 2005 with a shift towards liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The shift occurred across almost all income classes. In rural areas, the use of LPG increased fourfold but 75% of households still rely on fuelwood. Despite the decline in percentage households using traditional fuels, fuelwood demand continued to increase from 1993 to 2005 at a national scale due to an increasing total number of households. However, 25% of states and union territories experienced declines in rural fuelwood demand and over 70% declines in urban fuelwood demand. Forest cover has remained steady or increased slightly over the time period, reaffirming the conclusion that fuelwood demand may lead to local degradation but not large-scale deforestation. At the state level, increases in percent forest cover between 2000 and 2004 are positively associated with percent of total households that are urban (corresponding to fewer percentage households using wood) but not related to changes in fuelwood demand. Plantations are a primary cause of increases in forest area, where benefits to ecosystem services such as biodiversity and hydrologic function are controversial. Results suggest that households will continue to climb the energy ladder with future urbanization, resulting in substantial development benefits and reduced exposure to indoor air pollution. Implications of reduced fuelwood demand for forest cover are less certain but the limited data suggest that urbanization will promote a transition to increasing forest cover in the Indian context.
The author reviews trends in rural electrification over the past 30 years in Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, it is shown
that motivations for rural electrification programs have evolved significantly over the years, following changes in development
paradigms. The author finds, however, that knowledge of the impact of this has only marginally improved: low connection rates
and weak productive utilization identified in the 1980s remain true today, and impacts on such dimensions as health, education,
or income, though often used to justify projects, are largely undocumented. Indeed impact evaluations are methodologically
challenging in the field of infrastructures and have been limited thus far. Nevertheless examples of recent or ongoing impact
evaluations of rural electrification programs offer promising avenues for identifying both the effect of electricity per se
and the relative effectiveness of approaches to promoting it.
Social Scientists rarely take full advantage of the information available in their statistical results. As a consequence, they miss opportunities to present quantities that are of greatest substantive interest for their research and express the appropriate degree of certainty about these quantities. In this article, we offer an approach, built on the technique of statistical simulation, to extract the currently overlooked information from any statistical method and to interpret and present it in a reader-friendly manner. Using this technique requires some expertise, which we try to provide herein, but its application should make the results of quantitative articles more informative and transparent. To illustrate our recommendations, we replicate the results of several published works, showing in each case how the authors' own conclusions can be expressed more sharply and informatively, and, without changing any data or statistical assumptions, how our approach reveals important new information about the research questions at hand. We also offer very easy-to-use Clarify software that implements our suggestions.
Non-technical loss (NTL) during transmission of electrical energy is a major problem in developing countries and it has been very difficult for the utility companies to detect and fight the people responsible for theft. Electricity theft forms a major chunk of NTL. These losses affect quality of supply, increase load on the generating station, and affect tariff imposed on genuine customers. This paper discusses the factors that influence the consumers to steal electricity. In view of these ill effects, various methods for detection and estimation of the theft are discussed. This paper proposes an architectural design of smart meter, external control station, harmonic generator, and filter circuit. Motivation of this work is to deject illegal consumers, and conserve and effectively utilize energy. As well, smart meters are designed to provide data of various parameters related to instantaneous power consumption. NTL in the distribution feeder is computed by external control station from the sending end information of the distribution feeder. If a considerable amount of NTL is detected, harmonic generator is operated at that feeder for introducing additional harmonic component for destroying appliances of the illegal consumers. For illustration, cost-benefit analysis for implementation of the proposed system in India is presented.
Ongoing theft, corruption, and an artificially decreased pricing structure have made it nearly impossible for the state utilities in India to improve power service. As a result, industrial consumers across India exit the state-run system and rely on their own on-site power generation in order to ensure a consistent and reliable source of electricity. The 2003 Electricity Act encourages further power production from these captive plants through its open access clause. By encouraging the growth of these captive power plants, politicians in India set up a dual-track economy, whereby state-run and market-run production exist side-by-side. This strategy allows politicians to encourage private sector involvement in the electricity market, without jeopardizing the support of key political constituencies at the state level.
In the past, several electricity demand studies have been published for India based on aggregate macro data at the country or sub-national/state level. Since the underlying theory of consumer demand is based on the behaviour of individual agents, the use of micro data, which reflects individual and household behaviour, more closely, can shed greater light on the nature of consumer responses. In this paper, seasonal price and income elasticities of electricity demand in the residential sector of all urban areas of India are estimated for the first time using disaggregate level survey data for about 30,000 households. Three electricity demand functions have been econometrically estimated using monthly data for the winter, monsoon and summer season in order to understand the extent to which factors like income, prices, household size and other household specific characteristics, influence variations observed in individual households’ electricity demand. The results show electricity demand is income and price inelastic in all three seasons, and that household, demographic and geographical variables are significant in determining electricity demand.
In response to the recent growth of a largely theoretical body of literature analysing the linkages between corruption and pollution this paper subjects the corruption–pollution relationship to a detailed empirical examination. A distinction is drawn between the direct impact of corruption on pollution and the indirect impact which operates through corruption's impact on per capita income and the resultant impact of income on pollution. Using data for 94 countries covering the period 1987–2000, both direct and indirect impacts of corruption on air pollution emissions are estimated. For both sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, corruption is estimated to have a positive direct impact on per capita emissions. Indirect effects are found to be negative and larger in absolute value than direct effects for the majority of the sample income range. As a result, the total effect of corruption on emissions is negative for all but the highest income countries in the sample.
We investigate the effect of corruption and industry sector size on energy policy outcomes. The main predictions of our theory are that: (i) greater corruptibility of policy makers reduces energy policy stringency; (ii) greater lobby group coordination costs (increased industry sector size) results in more stringent energy policy; and (iii) workers’ and capital owners’ lobbying efforts on energy policy are negatively related. These predictions are tested using a unique panel data set on the energy intensity of 11 sectors in 12 OECD countries for years 1982–1996. The evidence generally supports the predictions.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of the recent patterns and trends of urban growth in developing countries. Over the last 20 years many urban areas have experienced dramatic growth, as a result of rapid population growth and as the world's economy has been transformed by a combination of rapid technological and political change. Around 3 billion people—virtually half of the world's total population-now live in urban settlements. And while cities command an increasingly dominant role in the global economy as centers of both production and consumption, rapid urban growth throughout the developing world is seriously outstripping the capacity of most cities to provide adequate services for their citizens. Over the next 30 years, virtually all of the world's population growth is expected to be concentrated in urban areas in the developing world. While much of the current sustainable cities debate focuses on the formidable problems for the world's largest urban agglomerations, the majority of all urban dwellers continue to reside in far smaller urban settlements. Many international agencies have yet to adequately recognize either the anticipated rapid growth of small and medium cities or the deteriorating living conditions of the urban poor. The challenges of achieving sustainable urban development will be particularly formidable in Africa.
Both India and China are countries in energy transition. This paper compares the household energy transitions in these nations through the analysis of both aggregate statistics and nationally representative household surveys. The two countries differ sharply in several respects. Residential energy consumption in China is twice that in India, in aggregate terms. In addition, Chinese households have almost universal access to electricity, while in India almost half of rural households and 10% of urban households still lack access. On aggregate, urban households in China also derive a larger share of their total energy from liquid fuels and grids (77%) as compared to urban Indian households (65%). Yet, at every income level, Indians derive a slightly larger fraction of their total household energy needs from liquid and grid sources of energy than Chinese with comparable incomes. Despite these differences, trends in energy use and the factors influencing a transition to modern energy in both nations are similar. Compared with rural households, urban households in both nations consume a disproportionately large share of commercial energy and are much further along in the transition to modern energy. However, total energy consumption in rural households exceeds that in urban households, because of a continued dependence on inefficient solid fuels, which contribute to over 85% of rural household energy needs in both countries. In addition to urbanisation, key drivers of the transition in both nations include income, energy prices, energy access and local fuel availability.
India accounts for a third of the world's population without access to electricity and about 40% of those without access to modern energy. Such a situation exists despite several initiatives and policies to support poor households. Alarmed by the gravity of the situation, the government has recently announced an ambitious programme of rural electrification. This paper looks into the energy access situation of India and argues that rural electrification alone is unlikely to resolve the energy access problem because of low penetration of electricity in the energy mix of the poor.
We investigate the determinants of the efficiency of firms with a focus on the role of corruption. We construct a simple theoretical model where corruption increases the factor requirements of firms because it diverts managerial effort away from factor coordination. We then exploit a unique dataset comprising firm-level information on 80 electricity distribution firms from 13 Latin American countries for the years 1994 to 2001. As predicted by the model, we find that more corruption in the country is strongly associated with more inefficient firms, in the sense that they employ more inputs to produce a given level of output. The economic magnitude of the effects is large. The results hold both in models with country and firm fixed effects. The results survive several robustness checks, including different measures of output and efficiency, and instrumenting for corruption. Other elements associated with inefficiency are public ownership, inflation, and lack of law and order, but corruption appears to play a separate and more robust role.
This paper examines the effect of changes in tenure security on residential investment in urban squatter neighborhoods. To address the endogeneity of property rights, I make use of variation in ownership status induced by a nationwide titling program in Peru. In a difference-in-difference analysis, I compare the change in housing investment before and after the program among participating households to the change in investment among two samples of nonparticipants. My results indicate that strengthening property rights in urban slums has a significant effect on residential investment: the rate of housing renovation rises by more than two-thirds of the baseline level. The bulk of the increase is financed without the use of credit, indicating that changes over time reflect an increase in investment incentives related to lower threat of eviction. (JEL: O12, O18, P25, P26) Copyright (c) 2005 The European Economic Association.
This paper has an empirical and overtly methodological goal. The authors propose and defend a method for estimating the effect of household economic status on educational outcomes without direct survey information on income or expenditures. They construct an index based on indicators of household assets, solving the vexing problem of choosing the appropriate weights by allowing them to be determined by the statistical procedure of principal components. While the data for India cannot be used to compare alternative approaches they use data from Indonesia, Nepal, and Pakistan which have both expenditures and asset variables for the same households. With these data the authors show that not only is there a correspondence between a classification of households based on the asset index and consumption expenditures but also that the evidence is consistent with the asset index being a better proxy for predicting enrollments--apparently less subject to measurement error for this purpose--than consumption expenditures. The relationship between household wealth and educational enrollment of children can be estimated without expenditure data. A method for doing so - which uses an index based on household asset ownership indicators- is proposed and defended in this paper. In India, children from the wealthiest households are over 30 percentage points more likely to be in school than those from the poorest households.
Using data from India, we estimate the relationship between household wealth and children's school enrollment. We proxy wealth by constructing a linear index from asset ownership indicators, using principal-components analysis to derive weights. In Indian data this index is robust to the assets included, and produces internally coherent results. State-level results correspond well to independent data on per capita output and poverty. To validate the method and to show that the asset index predicts enrollments as accurately as expenditures, or more so, we use data sets from Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal that contain information on both expenditures and assets. The results show large, variable wealth gaps in children's enrollment across Indian states. On average a "rich" child is 31 percentage points more likely to be enrolled than a "poor" child, but this gap varies from only 4.6 percentage points in Kerala to 38.2 in Uttar Pradesh and 42.6 in Bihar.
In the programme of total electrification, centralized supply of power generated by conventional methods using exhaustible resources is proving to be uneconomic and, more importantly, unmanageable so far as supply to rural areas, particularly remote places, are concerned. On the other hand, the decentralized approach based on supply of power produced with renewable energy resources available locally is, for various reasons, gradually being recognized as a viable alternative for such remote places. The present paper attempts to examine, from a broad-based socio-economic and environmental point of view, the feasibility of decentralized solar photovoltaic (SPV) system as a source of power compared to that from conventional sources in a remotely located island. The study, based on a sample survey, conducted in an island called ‘Sagar Dweep’ in West Bengal, India, shows that within a short spell of time of four years, there have been noticeable improvements and significant impact on education, trade and commerce, entertainment, health etc. as a result of supply of power from SPV power plants. Productivity level of some agricultural activities as well as women's participation in different economic activities (at night) other than household work have shown definite signs of betterment. The SPV system is also superior to other conventional systems on consideration of its environmental effects. Thus, on the whole, there seems to be a strong case for the locally installed SPV system in spite of its current unfavourable position in respect of the direct cost of production.
India human development survey (IHDS)
- Desai Sonalde
- Dubey Amaresh
- Sen Joshi Bl
- Shariff Mitali
- Abusaleh
- Vanneman
Desai Sonalde, Dubey Amaresh, Joshi BL, Sen Mitali, Shariff Abusaleh, Vanneman Reeve. India human development survey (IHDS). University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research; 2007.
Kerala: radical reform as development in an Indian state. Oakland: Institute for Food and Development Policy
- Franke Richard
- Chasin Barbara
Franke Richard W, Chasin Barbara H. Kerala: radical reform as development in
an Indian state. Oakland: Institute for Food and Development Policy; 1994.
2011 census report, houselisting and housing census data highlights
- India Government Of
Government of India. 2011 census report, houselisting and housing census
data highlights. 2011. http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/hlo/hlo_
highlights.html.