Volatility in West Asia has disrupted LPG supply chains, exposing an unresolved vulnerability. Rising prices are forcing vulnerable households back to firewood, crop residue and dung cakes
A woman in rural India who received an LPG connection under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana also received a promise of smoke-free cooking, better health and dignity. A decade later, she is back to burning firewood because the cylinder is probably empty and a refill costs more than her weekly grocery budget. Her story reflects India’s stalled clean-cooking transition. According to the National Sample Survey 79th Round (2022-23), nearly 32% of Indian households still depend on firewood, chips and crop residue for cooking, despite 10.5 crore LPG connections under PMUY. Volatility in West Asia has disrupted LPG supply chains, exposing an unresolved vulnerability. Rising prices are forcing vulnerable households back to firewood, crop residue and dung cakes, reversing years of progress.
This confirms a deeper reality. According to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, domestic LPG consumption fell from 3,067 thousand metric tonnes in December 2025 to 2,132 thousand metric tonnes in May 2026, a decline of over 30%. The decline predates the Iran crisis, suggesting that affordability and sustained-use challenges were already emerging. This recurring fourth-quarter decline may indicate structural challenges. After the kharif harvest, when crop residues are readily available, LPG becomes relatively more expensive. Households often respond by reverting to a mix of traditional and modern fuels: families cook dal on LPG but roti on a chulha. The risk is backsliding through a practice known as fuel stacking.
PMUY successfully addressed the first-generation challenge: access. India is now constrained by affordability, refill behaviour and sustained usage. The initiative requires a second generation focused on ensuring that households remain on the clean-cooking pathway. The consequences extend beyond LPG consumption. When households return to biomass fuels, they also return to household air pollution. According to the World Health Organization, pollution from solid fuels produces fine particulate matter and other harmful pollutants associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, stroke, pneumonia, ischaemic heart disease and acute respiratory infections. The burden is deeply unequal. The Time Use Survey 2024 shows that 81.5% of women participate in unpaid domestic services, compared with 27.1% of men. Women spend an average of 289 minutes daily on unpaid domestic work, against 88 minutes for men. In rural and low-income households, cooking responsibilities rest overwhelmingly with women. Children are vulnerable because they often remain close to their mothers during cooking, and repeated exposure can permanently affect respiratory health and lung development.
This challenge also exposes a blind spot in climate policy. Climate finance increasingly mobilises resources for solar parks, wind farms, battery storage, green hydrogen and low-carbon industrial technologies. These investments are essential, but reflect an approach that prioritises infrastructure and technological adoption. Household energy transitions depend on affordability, behavioural continuity and resilience to economic shocks. A household that cannot afford regular LPG refills may remain connected to clean energy on paper while moving away from it in practice.
The transition from biomass to LPG is one of India’s most important energy transitions, yet it sits outside mainstream climate-finance discussions. Viewed through the lens of those who run the kitchen, it is an energy, public-health, gender-equity and productivity-enhancing intervention. Its benefits are harder to measure. Yet if climate policy aims to improve human welfare while reducing environmental harm, these outcomes cannot remain peripheral. Until policy supports a second-generation transition focused on affordability, India’s energy transition will remain incomplete because ambition stopped at the kitchen door
Suvajit Banerjee is Fellow and Madhura Chowdhuri Associate Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. Views are personal.
