Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol Decision support system for Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana Shubham Aggarwal a, ⁎ , Sudhanshu Kumar b , Manoj Kumar Tiwari a a Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal 721302, India b Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Delhi, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Decision support system Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) Optimization CPLEX ABSTRACT Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) is a flagship energy policy initiated by the government of India to provide women below poverty line (BPL) access to clean energy fuel, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). This policy has led to the empowerment of women and protection against health hazards. A decision support system (DSS) is proposed to quantitatively analyse the implementation of PMUY in real time. This approach is first of its kind for analysis of a national level energy policy. The system uses mixed integer linear programming approach to mathematically formulate the policy using input parameters, decision variables and their relationships. The DSS requires input parameters namely distributing capacity of a LPG dealer, subsidised cylinders available per connection, number of households, and LPG penetration required. We have analysed different scenarios varying the input parameters mentioned. The decision support system has deterministically found the number of dealers required and LPG penetration in a region projecting both BPL and aggregate household coverage. The system helps in making sound decisions based on quantitative modelling ensuring optimal implementation of the policy. This kind of decision support system can be formulated for various policies to make sound decisions based on strong quantitative evidences. 1. Introduction Today, clean fuels play a significant role in overall development of humans by being critical to their basic needs of cooking, heating, and transportation. Clean fuels burn completely in presence of sufficient oxygen and produce far less smoke & other toxic gases such as oxides of Sulphur which cause serious health ailments. We can state that lack of access to clean fuels and energy carriers such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and electricity is energy poverty (IEA, 2010; Modi et al., 2005; Sagar, 2005). Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is one of these clean fuels widely used for domestic purposes. It is a mixture of lighter hydro- carbons namely propane and butane, which are present in gaseous state at ambient temperature and pressure. However, for ease in storage, handling and transportation, they are liquefied under pressure at room temperature. LPG is obtained either through crude oil refining or nat- ural gas fractionation. Traces of Iso-butane, butylenes, n-butane and propylene are also present in LPG. Since LPG has only a faint aroma, an odorant Ethyl Mercaptane is added as a safety measure to help in its detection. In the whole world, around 2.6 billion people do not have easy access to the clean fuels (Van der Hoeven, 2012). In India, around 66% of the total population depend on traditional biomass for cooking causing inescapable situation for women to prevent themselves from health hazards. About 293 million people don’t have access to elec- tricity (Van der Hoeven, 2012). According to Census of India (Chandramouli and Registrar General, 2011), 63% households in rural India depend on firewood, 23% use crop residue and cow dung as cooking fuels. LPG penetration constitutes only 11% of rural house- holds while for electricity it is less than even 0.1% for rural households and 0.15% for urban households. Around 700 million Indians, to sig- nificantly improve their health status, require a switch to cook stoves having 20–30% better efficiency as compared to ones presently in use. The same can be achieved by using LPG, biogas and other alternatives fuels with better calorific value, energy density, and less harmful emissions (Smith and Sagar, 2014). In areas of reliable and adequate power supply, electrical appliances are used for special purposes like ovens, electric kettles, etc. However, due to high heating losses and high power consumption, it is still not considered economical to use electricity for all common energy purposes like cooking in every section of society (Smith and Sagar, 2014). The Indian government is providing price subsidies on domestic LPG to catalyse the acceptance of clean fuels as a source of energy. Domestic Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) users consume a massive 90% of the total production of LPG in India for cooking purposes. The three public sector undertaking (PSU) oil companies namely Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.04.011 Received 19 May 2017; Received in revised form 22 January 2018; Accepted 6 April 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. Present address: House no: 881, Raggha Pathak Street, Hathras, Uttar Pradesh 204101, India. E-mail addresses: shubhamaggarwal027@gmail.com (S. Aggarwal), sudhansu@indianoil.in (S. Kumar), mkt09@hotmail.com (M.K. Tiwari). Energy Policy 118 (2018) 455–461 0301-4215/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T