Cause 07 · Winter evenings
Household fuel: wood, dung cakes and coal
Direct answer: many homes around Delhi still cook or keep warm with solid fuel. This gives smoke and CO, mostly in winter evenings. Delhi itself is almost fully on clean fuel; the smoke comes from the districts around it.
At a glance
- 97.7–99.7% of homes in Delhi's districts cook with clean fuel, but in Nuh (Mewat), 78 km away, only 22% do.1,6
- About 1 crore people in districts within 100 km of Delhi live in homes without clean cooking fuel.1,6,15
- The Ujjwala scheme has given about 10.35 crore LPG connections, but the average poor household still buys fewer than five refills a year.68,77
- Biomass burning, which includes home fires as well as crop and waste fires, was about 24% of Delhi's winter PM2.5 in a real-time study.30
How home fires pollute
Wood, dung cakes, crop waste and coal burn poorly in simple stoves. They release fine particles, black carbon and CO inside and around the home. The smoke peaks in the early morning and evening, when people cook and keep warm, which is also when the air near the ground is most still in winter (see cause 10). So even a small amount of smoke from many villages adds up across the region.
What research says
- In the real-time source study for the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, biomass burning was the second-largest group in winter PM2.5, after secondary particles.30 The study groups household fuel with other biomass fires, so it does not give a separate share for homes.
- Use of LPG under Ujjwala is rising, from about 3 refills per connection a year in 2019-20 to about 4.7 in 2025-26, but many homes still use wood or dung alongside LPG.68,77
Show the numbers
| Year | Refills per connection |
|---|---|
| 2019-20 | 3.01 |
| 2023-24 | 3.95 |
| 2024-25 | 4.43 |
| 2025-26 | 4.71 |
What our data shows
Show the numbers
| District | Clean cooking fuel |
|---|---|
| Nuh | 22% |
| Bharatpur | 24% |
| Mahendragarh | 34% |
| Palwal | 35% |
| Alwar | 35% |
| Bhiwani | 37% |
We joined NFHS-5 (2019–21) district data with WorldPop population. In districts whose centre is within 100 km of Delhi, about 1 crore of 5.1 crore people live in homes without clean cooking fuel.1,6,15
What is being done
LPG connections have reached most homes, but regular use is the gap. See Solutions for our recommendation on refill support in the districts nearest Delhi.
Limits of this data
NFHS-5 is from 2019–21. "Clean fuel" means LPG, piped gas or electricity as the main cooking fuel; families may still burn wood for heating.