Development of cooking sector in rural areas in India—A review

Energy for cooking is a major concern of consumers and policy makers in India. Most of the cooking in rural India is done using biomass. Traditional biomass stoves cause significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to formation of products of incomplete combustion. As far as urban population is concerned, around 95% of the population has access to LPG as cooking fuel at subsidized rates. To increase accessibility of LPG to rural areas is economically incompetent option when compared with the solar and biogas as other options available in rural areas. In this paper, an effort has been made to review the developments occurred in cooking sector rural areas in Indian context. The work carried out on different cooking fuels and cook stoves has been presented in order to use renewable energy sources and to identify the barriers of their dissemination. The status of cooking sector in India and the initiatives taken by the government of India has also been discussed and presented in the paper. It has been observed that the government of India is running several programs for the promotion of solar and biogas as cooking fuels in rural areas and it has succeeded to an extent.