With rising temperatures, it is expected that space cooling needs will drive up residential electricity demand. More and more households would purchase and use appliances with changing aspirations and increasing purchasing power. Similarly, efforts to shift to clean cooking fuels will result in significant changes to the energy mix in households. While this would help improve quality of life for citizens, what would it mean for energy and electricity demand across India’s states over the next two decades?

An open-data bottom-up energy model, called PIER, answers these important questions by modelling household appliance ownership, use and efficiency in detail. This exercise brings up some interesting insights about likely energy demand patterns under different scenarios. For instance, final end-use energy demand in the residential sector goes down over the next two decades despite rising population, income and appliance ownership. Despite a seven-fold increase in the number of households using air-conditioners, residential electricity demand increases only by 73% over two decades.

The report More with less: Insights from residential energy demand assessment using PIER can be accessed here: https://energy.prayaspune.org/our-work/research-report/more-with-less

The full recording of the webinar can be accessed below.