Debalina Chakravarty
@sxuk.edu.in
Assistant Professor in Economics
St. Xavier's University Kolkata
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Energy Economics, Urban Economics
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
Oindrila Dey and Debalina Chakravarty
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Oindrila Dey and Debalina Chakravarty
Emerald
PurposeElectric street car (ESC) is a globally popular clean and safe electric transport system for urban agglomeration. India envisions achieving “all-electric transport” by 2030, yet ESC as a modal transport alternative is not distinct in the policy discussion. The emerging market for electric transportation in urban spaces requires a detailed demand study at the service user level to remove behavioural barriers and design integrated energy planning in developing economies. This paper explores the probabilistic uptake intentions of the daily public transport commuters for ESCs over e-buses from the only Indian city with operational ESCs, Kolkata.Design/methodology/approachUsing a random utility model on primary survey data from daily commuters, the authors identify demographic, psychometric and socio-economic factors influencing probabilistic uptake of ESC over e-buses.FindingsIt estimates that 38% of the commuters demand ESC over e-buses, given the alternatives' comparative details. Factors like frequent availability and technological upgradation would increase the uptake of ESCs.Social implicationsThe study highlights that even though there are infrastructural challenges in the implementation of ESC, so does any other electric transport system; it is worth considering as a decarbonising transport alternative, given the high up-take intension of the users.Originality/valueThis is the first attempt to study the demand for ESC in developing economies, identifying the factors which may be considered in the sustainable urban transportation policy perspective.
Debalina Chakravarty and Joyashree Roy
Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE)
This study evaluates the benefits that rural households in India derive from dedicated solar microgrid service systems. A case study was conducted in Lakshmipura-Jharla, Rajasthan, a village in western India with significant potential for producing solar energy. In 2013, a private investor set up a solar microgrid in the village and distributed energy-efficient appliances. Its goal was to give poor households access to modern energy services. The study data were collected through a survey conducted among randomly selected households in the village. The survey found that such an electricity provision service had multidimensional benefits: flexible use of the energy service, more effective time allocation among women, more study time for students, improved indoor air quality, and safer public places. Given the initial unmet demand for modern energy in the village, technological interventions supported by policy has helped to expand consumption possibilities and new demand for services has emerged. The household-level frontier rebound effect is estimated to be more than 100%, reflecting a one-and-a-half times increase in the demand for illumination services among rural households. Frontier rebound effect estimates help quantify the benefits of solar microgrids and energy-efficient appliances for households in rural areas...
Harry D. Saunders, Joyashree Roy, Inês M.L. Azevedo, Debalina Chakravarty, Shyamasree Dasgupta, Stephane de la Rue du Can, Angela Druckman, Roger Fouquet, Michael Grubb, Boqiang Lin,et al.
Annual Reviews
This article presents a critical assessment of 40 years of research that may be brought under the umbrella of energy efficiency, spanning different aggregations and domains—from individual producing and consuming agents to economy-wide effects to the role of innovation to the influence of policy. After 40 years of research, energy efficiency initiatives are generally perceived as highly effective. Innovation has contributed to lowering energy technology costs and increasing energy productivity. Energy efficiency programs in many cases have reduced energy use per unit of economic output and have been associated with net improvements in welfare, emission reductions, or both. Rebound effects at the macro level still warrant careful policy attention, as they may be nontrivial. Complexity of energy efficiency dynamics calls for further methodological and empirical advances, multidisciplinary approaches, and granular data at the service level for research in this field to be of greatest societal benefit.
Debalina Chakravarty and Priyanka Chatterjee
Routledge India
Joyashree Roy, Debalina Chakravarty, Shyamasree Dasgupta, Debrupa Chakraborty, Shamik Pal, and Duke Ghosh
Elsevier BV
Driving economic growth through a low carbon trajectory will be a challenge as well as an opportunity for India in next three decades with a billion plus population. Cities are going to play a major role in this rapidly urbanising India. The scope of this article is to focus on some of the ongoing city-scale actions, which clearly indicate that India can strengthen its response by going beyond its NDCs. A combination of technology penetration, individual behaviour, community actions and policy interventions is driving such experiments. Ongoing investments in infrastructure are targeted towards creation of new facilities as well as modernisation of existing, and traditionally sustainable practices such as public transport, shared mobility, walking, cycling and rickshaw rides. Policies, supplemented by statutory mandates, are trying to command and regulate, nudge and incentivise climate responsive actions. Shifting public preferences towards star-rated household appliances is emerging as a social norm. Increased concern towards local air pollution is also driving changes. Large construction projects are being mandated to comply with building codes. Urban rooftops are facing competing demand from solar panels, organic gardens. Participation in the process of change is thus defining a new urban lifestyle, efficiently and sufficiently, energised by modern energy forms, and is thus paving the way to a new low emission future for India with global mitigation benefits.
Sarah Colenbrander, Andy Gouldson, Joyashree Roy, Niall Kerr, Sayantan Sarkar, Stephen Hall, Andrew Sudmant, Amrita Ghatak, Debalina Chakravarty, Diya Ganguly,et al.
SAGE Publications
Fast-growing cities in the global South have an important role to play in climate change mitigation. However, city governments typically focus on more pressing socioeconomic needs, such as reducing urban poverty. To what extent can social, economic and climate objectives be aligned? Focusing on Kolkata in India, we consider the economic case for low-carbon urban development, and assess whether this pathway could support wider social goals. We find that Kolkata could reduce its energy bill by 8.5 per cent and greenhouse gas emissions by 20.7 per cent in 2025, relative to business-as-usual trends, by exploiting readily available, economically attractive mitigation options. Some of these measures offer significant social benefits, particularly in terms of public health; others jeopardize low-income urban residents’ livelihoods, housing and access to affordable services. Our findings demonstrate that municipal mitigation strategies need to be designed and delivered in collaboration with affected communities in order to minimize social costs and – possibly – achieve transformative change.
Debalina Chakravarty and Joyashree Roy
Springer International Publishing
With increasing knowledge through empirical investigations, we now realize it is difficult to support a blanket statement that ‘rebound effect’ is high and will take back ‘all’ the energy savings benefits of efficiency improvements in countries of the Global South like India. In this article we review past literature, and report some new evidence of rebound effect estimates with insights that we draw from primary data collected on selected mobility service categories in India. The purpose of this article is to flag certain important observations that need further attention in the rebound discourse, which, we believe, promise to advance the subject both theoretically as well as for policy guidance in particular in the transport sector. The observed small proportion of super conservation behaviour and moderate partial rebound behaviour in mobility service can be scaled up by appropriate incentives going beyond price mechanisms and communication strategies. For example, improvement in promotional materials, comfort level of public transport systems, infrastructure to reduce congestion, and congestion management strategies can all remove behaviourial barriers to realise full potential of technical efficiency improvement.
Debalina Chakravarty, Shyamasree Dasgupta, and Joyashree Roy
Elsevier BV
Joyashree Roy, Shyamasree Dasgupta, and Debalina Chakravarty
John Wiley & Sons Ltd
In traditional economic growth theory, technology and continuous technological progress are seen as drivers of long-term growth. Yet what matters equally is the behavior of the potential adopter. “Users” in a social context, through adoption of a technology, give life to the inventors’ creativity expressed through design of a piece of hardware/equipment commonly called “technology.” Both technology and the behavior of its potential adopter matter. The technology adoption rate by producers and by final consumers, in many cases, determines the rate of productivity growth. Along with access to technology, user behavior matters with no less importance in determination of the outcome of technology diffusion and its scale of adoption. Examples of how the first diffusion happened of fountain pens, typewriters, sewing machines, candles, light bulbs, and so on, have given rise to many novels, stories, and movies to narrate the process of changing social practices. Besides professional literature there are several sources – oral tradition, chap book, ephemera, old literature, newspapers, films – which narrate how various “inventors” reached out to “users” to explain the benefits of a piece of a new technology and create a viable development regime through a positive bandwagon effect. In recent times, the superfast proliferation of mobile phones (in India 880 millions in the 15 years 1995– 2011)2 also shows a similar “planned strategic technology diffusion” and subsequent transformation in the communication service. The path dependency of technological progress is also discussed in the literature (Allen 1983; Barro and Sala-i-Martin 1992; Solow 1956). Appropriate artifacts, infrastructure, and institutions provide options to actors to make the right technology choice. However, the point to notice is that what is “strategically marketed” to users is not the technology per se but the service it provides. How it enhances quality of life by providing access, how it is cost (money/time/resource saving), how it gives a social status, competitive edge over peers, environmental benefits, social equity, etc. become important in the process of diffusion. Thinking holistically about socio-economic systems is key to capturing the complex dynamic between energy technology and energy use. A system transition
Debalina Chakravarty, Shyamasree Dasgupta, and Joyashree Roy
Elsevier BV
Actual climate benefit in terms of reduction in fossil fuel use and resultant climate benefit achieved through energy efficiency strategy can be correctly measured only when rebound effect is netted out. Although basic mechanism of rebound is widely accepted, the magnitude of the same is highly debated in the literature. Whole range of possibilities have been found in empirical studies: no rebound to partial and full rebound, backfire as well as superconservation/negative rebound. Such estimates vary across sectors: residential, commercial, transport and industry and across countries. There is limited evidence from developing countries where rebound effect is expected to be higher in the presence of unmet demand.