India's rural
electrification a great success story: IEA
India’s move to energise every village in the
country with electricity is one of the greatest success stories in the world
this year; providing clean cooking fuel to people is another laudable
achievement that will reduce premature deaths from pollution, the International
Energy Agency (IEA) said.
IEA, the global energy watchdog for the
developed world, said such initiatives boost productivity that improves
economic well-being, and can spur innovation that can boost micro businesses,
farm yields and help growth of schools, banks and medical services.
The government is now making rapid progress
in the next phase of its programme by ensuring that power lines are connected
with major institutions and administrative centres of every village as well as
every household that asks for access to electricity.
This has helped taking electricity lines to
95% households as on October 11 this year, up from 86% a year ago as 19 million
of the 30 million homes without access were energised, mostly in Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Jharkhand, government data showed.
“India’s success, in electrifying all
villages households, is far more noteworthy given the large population,
distances, and low affordability. The last 10-15% of the target is always the
most challenging, and it took a strong political will and diligent work by the
utilities to get it done,” PwC partner Mr. Kameswara Rao said. He said a bigger
task was to ensure viability as new consumers may take a few years to afford
electricity. “Policy makers must look at setting up community level renewable
energy generation to reduce reliance on costlier conventional power,” he
observed.
Huge social and economic benefits
Supplying electricity to people was an
important milestone in the path to provide modern energy to every person on the
planet, the IEA said. “This means that for the first time ever, the total
number of people without access fell below 1 billion, according to new data
from World Energy Outlook 2018. In particular, one of the greatest success
stories in access to energy in 2018 was India completing the electrification of
all of its villages,” the Paris-based IEA said in its latest assessment in the
‘World Energy Outlook 2018’ report.
The agency said in another report that “while
this next ‘last mile’ challenge will be not be easy to meet, particularly in a
country as large and geographically diverse as India, the social and economic
benefits are significant”.
It said electric lighting makes the use of
candles, kerosene and other polluting fuels for lighting redundant, which saves
money and improves health.
“Electricity can increase productive hours in
a household leading to positive outcomes on education and economic wellbeing.
It can also spur innovation and lead to entrepreneurial micro businesses
ventures and, in time, lead to greater agricultural yields. Benefits also flow
to the likes of schools, banking and medical services,” the agency said.
The IEA said globally, gains in access to
electricity often go hand in hand with access to clean cooking fuel. In this
context, the IEA lauded India for the success of its mission to provide
liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to poor households.
“In India, 50 million free LPG stoves and
initial refills have been provided to poor households via the high-profile
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana since 2015, and the government has set a target
of providing LPG connections to 80 million households by 2020,” the agency
said.
Chemical Weekly Issue date: 20th November 2018
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