41% of India cooks with wood, emitting 340 mn tons of CO2

In India, a significant portion of the population, approximately 41%, still relies on traditional cooking fuels such as wood, cow dung, or biomass, emitting approximately 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

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This practice contributes to about 13% of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, as revealed by a recent report titled "India's Transition to Ecooking" by the independent think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The report emphasizes the environmental and health consequences of this reliance on non-clean cooking solutions.

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwa-la Yojana (PMUY), a government initiative launched in May 2016, aimed to expand access to liquified petroleum gas (LPG) across India. While the program successfully provided LPG cylinders to over 100 million households by March 2023, the CSE report indicates that this hasn't guaranteed a sustained transition to clean cooking in the households benefiting from the scheme.