Cleaner Kitchens, Polluted Skies: Hidden Health Cost of India’s Electricity Boom

The researchers report that GDP per person roughly tripled between 2000 and 2020, accompanied by a nearly fourfold increase in electricity demand.

A family that replaces a smoky cooking fire with a cleaner stove breathes less polluted air at home. Millions of households in India have benefited from cleaner cooking, supported by rising incomes and better access to modern energy. The coal plants producing much of the country's electricity release pollution into the air outside, adding to the health risks people face in cities.

The study "Economic-boom-driven electricity demand linked to urban air pollution and health in India," published in Nature Cities, explores these changes. Basudev Swain and colleagues studied economic and energy records, satellite images, pollution models and health estimates to understand the connection. Their findings show how India's growing prosperity has helped families reduce smoke in their kitchens, and how its dependence on coal for electricity has contributed to worsening outdoor air pollution.

More Homes Have Electricity, and Coal Keeps Meeting the Demand

India's economic expansion gathered pace after the 1991 reforms, with particularly strong growth after 2000. The researchers report that GDP per person roughly tripled between 2000 and 2020, accompanied by a nearly fourfold increase in electricity demand.

Access to electricity expanded from approximately 60% of the population to more than 95%, bringing power to households and supporting growing industrial and commercial activity. The statistical analysis found that every 1% rise in GDP per person was associated with roughly 1.14% higher electricity demand.

Coal supplied about 76% of electricity generation in 2020, retaining its dominant position despite growth in renewable energy. The study's power-plant inventory counted 71 coal-fired plants before 2000 and another 182 commissioned during 2001–2024, bringing the total to 253.

Many plants were concentrated across the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the region the researchers call the Horseshoe Belt, where expanding cities, industrial activity and dense populations overlap. That geography places large numbers of people near major emission sources, with pollution travelling beyond the neighbourhoods surrounding individual plants.

The Pollution Taking Shape Above India's Cities

The researchers report that energy-sector sulfur dioxide emissions rose from less than one million tonnes annually in the late 1990s to approximately seven to eight million tonnes by the early 2020s. Sulfate's share of urban aerosol optical depth increased from about 35.5% in 2000 to 46.4% in 2020. Aerosol optical depth measures how airborne particles block or scatter light through the atmosphere; it differs from the concentration of particles people breathe at ground level. The study describes a roughly twofold rise in this broader measure of urban particle pollution.

Atmospheric simulations estimated that the power sector's contribution to total urban aerosol optical depth grew from approximately 16% to 36%, making it the largest human-generated contributor in 2020. Industry accounted for about 32%.

Ground-level PM2.5, particles measuring 2.5 micrometres or less, increased from an urban average of approximately 35–38 micrograms per cubic metre in 2000 to around 40–45 by 2020. Concentrations exceeded 60–80 micrograms per cubic metre across extensive northern and eastern areas.

The modelled PM2.5 contribution from power generation rose by approximately 400%, compared with about 90% for industry. Transport's modelled contribution fell by roughly 40% in the comparison, which used the pandemic year 2020, when restrictions disrupted traffic and other activities. Pollution temporarily declined during lockdowns and rebounded afterwards, making the longer records valuable for interpreting that unusual year.

Cleaner Cooking and a Growing Outdoor Health Burden

Rising incomes helped households move from wood, dung, crop residues and coal towards LPG, natural gas, electricity and cleaner cooking technologies. Access to clean cooking grew from approximately one-quarter of the population in 2000 to nearly three-quarters by 2023.

National health datasets cited in the paper show household air-pollution deaths falling from roughly 1.25–1.30 million annually around 2010 to about one million by 2023. Outdoor air-pollution deaths rose from approximately 220,000 in 1990 to nearly 950,000 in 2023.

The researchers separately estimated urban deaths attributable to PM2.5, combining pollution concentrations, population exposure and established relationships between exposure and disease. Their calculations covered ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections.

Estimated annual urban PM2.5-attributable deaths increased from approximately 670,000 in 2000 to 870,000 in 2020, a rise of about 30%. Within the sector-specific calculations, deaths attributed to power-sector pollution climbed from approximately 15,000 to nearly 300,000; the industrial estimate increased from around 30,000 to 140,000.

These are modelled population-level estimates, rather than individually documented deaths traced to particular power plants. The urban figures and the national outdoor estimates come from different assessment approaches and cover overlapping populations, so adding them together would misrepresent the burden.

The greatest estimated harm clustered in densely populated northern and eastern urban regions, where high exposure coincided with extensive coal-fired infrastructure.

Cleaner Electricity Belongs in India's Growth Story

The study draws strength from combining several kinds of evidence. Satellite observations identified sulfur dioxide hotspots near coal-plant clusters, atmospheric models estimated contributions from different sectors, and ground measurements helped assess how well the pollution datasets represented observed conditions.

The authors acknowledge uncertainty in the precise numbers. Long-term measurements of individual aerosol components remain limited, and the MERRA-2 dataset may underestimate particle concentrations in densely populated cities, potentially producing conservative mortality estimates. Sulfate results are more reliable for understanding long-term changes than pinning down exact concentrations, and statistical associations alone cannot prove every step of the proposed chain.

The findings support a clear priority: reducing coal dependence in electricity generation is essential to protecting the health benefits of wider energy access. Cleaner cooking remains valuable in its own right, and its expansion needs a power system that reduces pollution across the communities it serves.