Income-driven and policy-intervened energy transitions in rural residential energy sector in India, and their roles to the achievement of its NAAQS

Particulate matter (PM) pollution damages human health, causing the highest burden of diseases in Asian countries. Recently, many of the Asian countries have set up standards and policies to improve air quality. For example, India has also recently developed ambitious policies in its residential energy sector to reduce particulate matter (PM) pollution. We focus on the rural residential sector in the energy transition in India, because it's an important source of PM pollution, and has a complicated transition dynamics, driven by fuel accessibility, income improvement, policy intervention, etc. Here we study the income-driven and policy-driven transition in India, referring to the energy transition experiences in China.

Survey data from China has shown a rapid energy transitions in rural residential sectors between 1992 to 2012 (Tao et al., 2018). This progress of transition in China has been characterized by a non-linear function with income and heating degree days, without exogenous policy targets. We therefore consider it represents the income-driven dynamics of rural residential energy transition. Our first research question is to test if the similar income-driven transition has taken place in India between 2001 to 2011, when major fuel switch policies have not been in place, although some energy efficiency programs took place. Figure 1 indicates the existence of a similar non-linear model applies in India between rural per person income and the fraction of clean energy, as observed in China. During 2011 to recently, several fuel switch and technology-deployment policies have been going on, data and studies will be collected to analyze the impacts (or interactions) of the policy interventions

Finally, we develop a scenario that simulates the income-driven energy transition in India until 2030, that follows the historical income-clean-energy relationship in India. This income-driven scenario is compared to a policy-intervention scenario that incorporates recent planning and regulations (Purohit et al., 2019). By examining the difference between the income-driven and the policy-intervention scenario, we study how the two dynamics contribute to energy transition and improvement of air quality in India. All the scenarios' development and air quality calculations are accomplished in the GAINS model.