Access to modern energy services is a prerequisite for economic growth and human development and is critical in fulfilling basic needs such as cooking, lighting, mobility, water pumping etc.  Absence of access to modern energy services deprives people from the bare minimum living standard - it constrains generation of productive activities, incomes and employment in rural areas.  While there is no internationally adopted definition of “energy access”, it could broadly be defined as the physical availability of modern energy carriers and improved end-use devices at the household level at affordable prices. It includes access to less polluting and efficient household energy for cooking and heating (improved cookstoves with traditional solid biomass fuels, liquid and gaseous fuels like kerosene and LPG), or energy from renewable sources such as solar, electricity for powering appliances and lights in households and public facilities and mechanical power from either electricity or other energy sources that improve the productivity of labor.  Access is a function of availability and affordability and can also be defined as a household’s ability to obtain an energy service, should it decide to do so.