The book takes a socio-economic approach to analyzing the energy system
and energy consumption in India from a household perspective. In
addition, the work incorporates two crucial aspects often ignored by
many traditional modeling approaches that are characteristic of most
developing countries, namely the importance of non-commercial sources of
energy, mostly biofuels, and the very large diversity in the patterns of
energy use in households with widely diverging lifestyles and
well-being. Adopting a household perspective allows for analyzing how
energy use and consumption patterns are linked with the quality of life
of individual households or persons and provides a novel view of the
energy system and development in India. The work makes a first step in
identifying key driving forces and some important trends in technical,
economic, demographic, and lifestyle changes that have an impact on the
patterns and use of energy within the country over the last couple of
decades.