Achievements and challenges of energy poverty alleviation policies: Evidence from the select states in India.

Indian energy sector has undergone a tremendous transformation with consistent government policy interventions since 2000. Against this backdrop, we examine the extent to which energy poverty has decreased due to the expansion of energy services and the significant determinants of energy poverty in select six states in India. Overall, results reveal that absolute multidimensional energy poverty has substantially decreased across all states examined in the study as well as across all income and social groups between 2015 and 2018. Specifically, acute multidimensional energy poverty has reduced by an average of 30% between 2015 and 2018 in six states. At the same time, dependency on biomass remains more or less the same between 2015 and 2018. Results also show that inequality in the access to energy across income and social groups exists, and education is negatively related to energy poverty. Energy poverty has declined by a similar percentage among most employment groups, except for people practicing cattle rearing. Finally, culture is a significant determinant of energy poverty as households with the elderly and more land owned have higher energy poverty, probably due to the easy access to biomass and preference of such households to use it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]