IEA Praises India for Improvement in Access to Energy

India’s efforts in providing energy access to those without it have come in for praise from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).

“India is clearly a success story,” said Mr. Bruce Murphy, IEA India Programme Manager, and Ms. Hannah Daly, World Energy Outlook analyst, in a commentary on energy access. They said that since 2000 around half-a-billion people have gained access to electricity in India “with political effort over the last five years significantly accelerating progress.”

The commentary comes against the backdrop of the Indian government’s announcement of April 28 that the country had achieved its goal of providing electricity to every village in India. “This is one of the greatest achievements in the history of energy,” said Mr. Murphy and Ms. Daly. Their comment-note syncs with the observations made by the IEA in its ‘World Energy Outlook 2017’ report that India’s growth was on course to achieving “access to electricity for all” by 2020, which is “a colossal achievement.” It noted that the pace had accelerated in recent years, with the country adding annually 40-mn people to those with access to electricity, since 2011.

The experts note that India is taking the lessons learnt from providing electricity access to a “related problem” – access to clean cooking fuels. Around 78 crore people in India depend on biomass for cooking, but the country is making progress. Almost 3.6-crore LPG connections have been made since the government launched a scheme in May 2016 to provide free connections to families living below the poverty line.