IEA defines energy access as "a household having reliable and affordable access to both clean cooking facilities and to electricity, which is enough to supply a basic bundle of energy services initially, and then an increasing level of electricity over time to reach the regional average"

Benefits of improved energy access

• Sustainable Development Goal: Access to energy services is critical for advancing human development, furthering social inclusion of the poorest & most vulnerable in society and to meeting many of the SDGs.
• Improving Standard of living: Providing energy for all would significantly improve the lives of those without access and boost their economic prospects.
• Clean cooking fuel: Providing access to clean cooking for all will lowers the premature death from present 2.8 million people per year to 1.8 million by 2030. It would also lead to women empowerment as they can now be engaged in more productive activities and can acquire new knowledge and skills.

Challenges to increasing energy access

• Finance: Energy for all will require $786 billion in cumulative investment in the period to 2030, equal to 3.4% of total energy sector investment over the period. This seems to be difficult with lagging worldwide economy and increasing pressure of NPA’s on Indian economy.
• Poor grid connectivity: With the increasing role of renewable in energy mix, there is a need for expanding grid connectivity infrastructure for last man connectivity.
• Quality of Electricity Access: Electricity access is about affordability and reliability whereas some States in India have struggled to provide less than ten hours with electricity access per day to households.
• Rural-Urban gap in access: In India only around 71% of all households have electricity with considerable rural-urban gap.

Way forward
• Policy push: Implement policies that encourage a wide range of solutions and business models, and encouraging entry of new entrants with innovative ideas.
• Facilitate rural electricity access by creating suitable conditions for off-grid investment, mini-grid and by making provision for subsequent connection of decentralized solutions to the grid.
• Tapping renewable energy: Decreasing costs for renewable energy technologies and adequate energy efficiency measures offer an opportunity for countries to be creative about clean energy access expansion.
• Hybrid systems: using renewable energy sources together with batteries or a diesel generator for achieving universal electricity access.
• Encouraging Private investment: Private investment along with Public finance will be required to meet the need for investment in clean energy infrastructure and improved energy efficiency.
• Productive uses of electricity are required in agricultural, commercial, and industrial activities for electricity access programs to be transformative.
• Energy efficient appliances need to be promoted to reduce the energy investment costs and to increase affordability of electricity access programs (UJALA program)                                                                                                                                                                                                        • Electrification of Household (Intensive Electrification): Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) strives to provide electricity connections to more than 40 million families in rural and urban areas by December 2018.
• Augmenting Generation capacity: According to NITI AAYOG, the energy demand in India is likely to go up by 2.7-3.2 times between 2012 and 2040.
• Proper Accountability and Monitoring mechanism is critical for the government to achieve objectives of Draft National energy Policy.
• Reduce T&D losses for Reliable Supply of Electricity: It can generate social and economic benefits like improving women’s participation in labour markets, enhancing labour productivity etc.
• Adopting Energy Plus approach as recommended by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which emphasizes on energy access in combination with productive use of electricity for income generation and livelihood upliftment.
• Improving Capacity building of Discoms through implementing appropriate measures such as smart meters, infrastructure development, franchisee arrangements with local self-help-groups (for more effective billing, monitoring and collection)
• Eliminating political interference would also allow discoms to improve billing and revenue collections, revise tariffs to reflect costs and crack down on electricity theft.