This paper investigates the role of ‘social spillovers’ – people learning from and imitating the behaviour of other people – in the adoption of new technologies, with a focus on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in India.

Despite extremely high exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass burning, 63 per cent of rural households continue to use firewood, dung cakes and agricultural residue as the primary fuel for cooking finds this new report released by CEEW.

Ninety-two per cent of the electricity-deprived population of India lives in rural areas. Farm power availability is a third of that of China. More than four million rural micro-enterprises in India mention lack of reliable electricity as a major bottleneck to their business.

The majority of rural Indian households remain dependent on unreliable, inefficient and harmful household energy technologies. Rural households make their energy decisions with respect to the Water-Energy-Food security (WEF) Nexus jointly, however, previous research initiatives have analyzed household energy access problem in isolation.

This gender equality case study presents the contributions of the ADB-India project in providing 24-hour power supply to rural households in Madhya Pradesh and how it has opened opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the energy sector.