The impact of policy mix on the adoption of energy- efficient lighting

Abstract

Climate change and ever-increasing energy consumption have become a pertinent topic of discussion around the world. There is an urgent need to lower the carbon footprint to meet the requirements of the Paris agreement. The government of India has introduced various policies such as Bachat Lamp Yojana and UJALA to push for energy-efficient technologies. The UJALA policy has been deemed quite successful in this regard meeting its target and resulting in a market creation of the LED technology. Being centrally implemented, the UJALA policy has been implemented with the limited role of state authorities. However, a difference in policy penetration at state levels is observed. Also, the concurrent nature of the energy sector in India deems it important to understand the energy-efficiency efforts of Indian states that contribute to better penetration of energy-efficiency policies like UJALA. This is done via an in-depth analysis of UJALA policy implementation with respect to its impact and the role of the stakeholders involved in the study. This study was utilized to determine the causal conditions that impact the penetration of UJALA policy at sub-national levels in India consisting of policy mix characteristics and exogenous factors. The dataset of these factors was analyzed using fsQCA methodology to derive the configurational combinations of the causal factors that result in higher uptake of LED bulbs in the states. A total of five solution pathways were derived from the research and were presented as results of this research.