India unveils $2.5 billion plan to electrify all households by end 2018

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, launched a 2.5-billion-dollar project to electrify the country’s households by the end of 2018, providing free connections to the poor and at very low cost to others. More than 40 million households -about a quarter of all in the country- are yet to be electrified and about 300 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are still not connected to the national grid.

The states will need to complete the electrification by December 2018 and the government will identify those eligible for free electricity connections across the country. Modi said the scheme would bring ‘monumental change’ in the life of the poor, and this was possible after three years of reforms in the power sector.

The “Saubhagya scheme” will largely be funded by the federal government. Although the households to be covered are spread across the country, the scheme primarily targets rural India where electrification rates are much lower. Millions of rural Indians still rely on lamps fuelled by kerosene, which the scheme wants to reduce. Kerosene is a health and environmental hazard and restricting its use would help India’s ambitious climate goal to cut emissions. The government also said it would distribute solar power packs with battery bank to un-electrified households in such areas.