Narasimha D Rao
Biographic Data
| ID | 3588839 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Narasimha D Rao |
| GIVEN NAMES | Narasimha D |
| FAMILY NAME | Rao |
| SIGNATURE | RAO N D |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1888-5292 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 261 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Closing decent living gaps in energy and emissions scenarios
Social and environmental agendas are intricately connected and shape the international policy discourse. To support these discussions, we present a framework for interpreting global scenario outcomes on energy demand and supply-side transitions through the lens of societal well-being and minimum resource requirements. We develop and apply a new model called Decent living standards and the Environment in Scenarios considering Inequality and Resour…
Water, air pollution and carbon footprints of conspicuous/luxury consumption in India
Social and contextual determinants of heat pump adoption in the US
Building electrification with heat pumps (HPs) is an important pillar of decarbonization. The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 provides unprecedented cash incentives to households. However, little is understood of peoples’ preferences or constraints, and hence of the efficacy of these incentives. We develop a residential heating appliance choice model that identifies socio-demographic, contextual and economic determinants of adoption usin…
How much infrastructure is required to support decent mobility for all? An exploratory assessment
Decarbonizing transport is crucial for achieving climate targets, which is challenging because mobility is growing rapidly. Personal mobility is a key societal service and basic need, but currently not available to everyone with sufficient quality and quantity. The basis for mobility and accessibility of desired destinations is infrastructure, but its build-up and maintenance require a substantial fraction of global resource use. The question ari…
Application of an alternative framework for measuring progress towards SDG 7.1
Global progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 7.1: ‘By 2030, ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services’ continues to be measured by mere access to energy carriers, using binary indicators that inadequately reflect the multi-dimensional nature of the goal. In this work, we describe and apply an alternative framework to track critical dimensions of energy provisioning and household capabilities that aligns mo…
Decent living gaps and energy needs around the world
In recent years, there has been growing interest in defining what exactly constitutes “decent living standards” (DLS)—the material underpinnings of human well-being. We assess the gaps in providing decent health, shelter, nutrition, socialization, and mobility within countries, across the world. Our results show that more people are deprived of DLS than are income-poor, even when numbers are measured against medium income poverty thresholds. We e…
Advancing energy and well-being research
Household contributions to and impacts from air pollution in India
Explaining income inequality trends
In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in a comparative study, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010. Yet, we are particularly interested in the heterogene…
Providing decent living with minimum energy
It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provide decent material livings to the entire global populat…
Energy requirements for decent living in India, Brazil and South Africa
Sensitivity of grain yields to historical climate variability in India
Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation influence crop productivity across the planet. With episodes of extreme climate becoming increasingly frequent, buffering crop production against these stresses is a critical aspect of climate adaptation. In India, where grain production and diets are closely linked, national food supply is sensitive to the effect of climate variability on monsoon grain production. Here we quantitatively examine the h…
Income inequality projections for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)
Energy investment needs for fulfilling the Paris Agreement and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies
Estimating Uncertainty in Household Energy Footprints
We develop a methodology to characterize and quantify uncertainty in relating consumption to production in household energy footprints. This uncertainty arises primarily from inconsistencies between national accounts and household surveys and, to a smaller extent, from using aggregated sectors. Researchers may introduce significant inaccuracies by ignoring these inconsistencies when reporting household footprints. We apply the methodology to Indi…
India’s energy and emissions future
As a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, but also as a developing country starting from a low emissions base, India is an important actor in global climate change mitigation. However, perceptions of India vary widely, from an energy-hungry climate deal-breaker to a forerunner of a low carbon future. Developing clarity on India's energy and emissions future is challenged by the uncertainties of India's development transitions, including its p…
Global exposure and vulnerability to multi-sector development and climate change hotspots
Understanding the interplay between multiple climate change risks and socioeconomic development is increasingly required to inform effective actions to manage these risks and pursue sustainable development. We calculate a set of 14 impact indicators at different levels of global mean temperature (GMT) change and socioeconomic development covering water, energy and land sectors from an ensemble of global climate, integrated assessment and impact m…
Balancing clean water-climate change mitigation trade-offs
Energy systems support technical solutions fulfilling the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal for clean water and sanitation (SDG6), with implications for future energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions. The energy sector is also a large consumer of water, making water efficiency targets ingrained in SDG6 important constraints for long-term energy planning. Here, we apply a global integrated assessment model to quantify the cost and c…
Less global inequality can improve climate outcomes
Two of the biggest global challenges we face today are mitigating climate change and economic inequality. Some research suggests these goals are in conflict, based largely on the observation that a dollar spent at higher income levels is less carbon intensive than at lower income levels. We put this concern to rest. We quantify this effect in its most extreme manifestation, both within countries and between countries. We use a wide range of incom…
Healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diets in India
Decent Living Standards
We define a set of universal, irreducible and essential set of material conditions for achieving basic human wellbeing, along with indicators and quantitative thresholds, which can be operationalized for societies based on local customs and preferences. We draw support for this decent living standard (DLS) from different accounts of basic justice, including the capability approach and basic needs. The DLS goes beyond existing multidimensional pov…
Energy access and living standards
A subset of Sustainable Development Goals pertains to improving people's living standards at home. These include the provision of access to electricity, clean cooking energy, improved water and sanitation. We examine historical progress in energy access in relation to other living standards. We assess regional patterns in the pace of progress and relative priority accorded to these different services. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa would have to…
White goods for white people? Drivers of electric appliance growth in emerging economies
Will everybody want and have a refrigerator, television and washing machine as incomes rise? Considerable uncertainty surrounds the likely increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions from rising incomes among the world's poor. We examine drivers of and predict appliance ownership using machine learning and other techniques with household survey data in India, South Africa and Brazil. Televisions and refrigerators are consistently preferre…
Access to infrastructure services
Providing decent living with minimum energy
It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provide decent material livings to the entire global populat…
Decent Living Standards
We define a set of universal, irreducible and essential set of material conditions for achieving basic human wellbeing, along with indicators and quantitative thresholds, which can be operationalized for societies based on local customs and preferences. We draw support for this decent living standard (DLS) from different accounts of basic justice, including the capability approach and basic needs. The DLS goes beyond existing multidimensional pov…
Gender impacts and determinants of energy poverty
Income inequality projections for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)
Human development in a climate-constrained world
Carbon Pricing Revenues Could Close Infrastructure Access Gaps
How much infrastructure is required to support decent mobility for all? An exploratory assessment
Decarbonizing transport is crucial for achieving climate targets, which is challenging because mobility is growing rapidly. Personal mobility is a key societal service and basic need, but currently not available to everyone with sufficient quality and quantity. The basis for mobility and accessibility of desired destinations is infrastructure, but its build-up and maintenance require a substantial fraction of global resource use. The question ari…
Less global inequality can improve climate outcomes
Two of the biggest global challenges we face today are mitigating climate change and economic inequality. Some research suggests these goals are in conflict, based largely on the observation that a dollar spent at higher income levels is less carbon intensive than at lower income levels. We put this concern to rest. We quantify this effect in its most extreme manifestation, both within countries and between countries. We use a wide range of incom…
Healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diets in India
White goods for white people? Drivers of electric appliance growth in emerging economies
Will everybody want and have a refrigerator, television and washing machine as incomes rise? Considerable uncertainty surrounds the likely increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions from rising incomes among the world's poor. We examine drivers of and predict appliance ownership using machine learning and other techniques with household survey data in India, South Africa and Brazil. Televisions and refrigerators are consistently preferre…
International and intranational equity in sharing climate change mitigation burdens
Household contributions to and impacts from air pollution in India
Access to infrastructure services
Regulatory practice and politics
Social and contextual determinants of heat pump adoption in the US
Building electrification with heat pumps (HPs) is an important pillar of decarbonization. The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 provides unprecedented cash incentives to households. However, little is understood of peoples’ preferences or constraints, and hence of the efficacy of these incentives. We develop a residential heating appliance choice model that identifies socio-demographic, contextual and economic determinants of adoption usin…
Regulatory practice and politics
Gender impacts and determinants of energy poverty
International and intranational equity in sharing climate change mitigation burdens
Electrifying India
Given the extent to which scholars and media lament the "entrenched interests" in the Indian power sector, surprisingly little has been written about how these interests and their influence vary across the country. The few works on the politics of this sector focus mostly on the national scale and the post-1991 period of liberalisation, relegating prior history to a brief context-setting chronicle of key events and policies. Sunila Kale's book is…
Human development in a climate-constrained world
Carbon Pricing Revenues Could Close Infrastructure Access Gaps
Energy access and living standards
A subset of Sustainable Development Goals pertains to improving people's living standards at home. These include the provision of access to electricity, clean cooking energy, improved water and sanitation. We examine historical progress in energy access in relation to other living standards. We assess regional patterns in the pace of progress and relative priority accorded to these different services. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa would have to…
White goods for white people? Drivers of electric appliance growth in emerging economies
Will everybody want and have a refrigerator, television and washing machine as incomes rise? Considerable uncertainty surrounds the likely increase in energy consumption and carbon emissions from rising incomes among the world's poor. We examine drivers of and predict appliance ownership using machine learning and other techniques with household survey data in India, South Africa and Brazil. Televisions and refrigerators are consistently preferre…
Access to infrastructure services
Energy investment needs for fulfilling the Paris Agreement and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies
Estimating Uncertainty in Household Energy Footprints
We develop a methodology to characterize and quantify uncertainty in relating consumption to production in household energy footprints. This uncertainty arises primarily from inconsistencies between national accounts and household surveys and, to a smaller extent, from using aggregated sectors. Researchers may introduce significant inaccuracies by ignoring these inconsistencies when reporting household footprints. We apply the methodology to Indi…
India’s energy and emissions future
As a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, but also as a developing country starting from a low emissions base, India is an important actor in global climate change mitigation. However, perceptions of India vary widely, from an energy-hungry climate deal-breaker to a forerunner of a low carbon future. Developing clarity on India's energy and emissions future is challenged by the uncertainties of India's development transitions, including its p…
Global exposure and vulnerability to multi-sector development and climate change hotspots
Understanding the interplay between multiple climate change risks and socioeconomic development is increasingly required to inform effective actions to manage these risks and pursue sustainable development. We calculate a set of 14 impact indicators at different levels of global mean temperature (GMT) change and socioeconomic development covering water, energy and land sectors from an ensemble of global climate, integrated assessment and impact m…
Balancing clean water-climate change mitigation trade-offs
Energy systems support technical solutions fulfilling the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal for clean water and sanitation (SDG6), with implications for future energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions. The energy sector is also a large consumer of water, making water efficiency targets ingrained in SDG6 important constraints for long-term energy planning. Here, we apply a global integrated assessment model to quantify the cost and c…
Less global inequality can improve climate outcomes
Two of the biggest global challenges we face today are mitigating climate change and economic inequality. Some research suggests these goals are in conflict, based largely on the observation that a dollar spent at higher income levels is less carbon intensive than at lower income levels. We put this concern to rest. We quantify this effect in its most extreme manifestation, both within countries and between countries. We use a wide range of incom…
Healthy, affordable and climate-friendly diets in India
Decent Living Standards
We define a set of universal, irreducible and essential set of material conditions for achieving basic human wellbeing, along with indicators and quantitative thresholds, which can be operationalized for societies based on local customs and preferences. We draw support for this decent living standard (DLS) from different accounts of basic justice, including the capability approach and basic needs. The DLS goes beyond existing multidimensional pov…
Energy requirements for decent living in India, Brazil and South Africa
Sensitivity of grain yields to historical climate variability in India
Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation influence crop productivity across the planet. With episodes of extreme climate becoming increasingly frequent, buffering crop production against these stresses is a critical aspect of climate adaptation. In India, where grain production and diets are closely linked, national food supply is sensitive to the effect of climate variability on monsoon grain production. Here we quantitatively examine the h…
Income inequality projections for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)
Explaining income inequality trends
In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this research question in a comparative study, we examine a global sample of 73 countries between 1981 and 2010. Yet, we are particularly interested in the heterogene…
Providing decent living with minimum energy
It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provide decent material livings to the entire global populat…
Application of an alternative framework for measuring progress towards SDG 7.1
Global progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 7.1: ‘By 2030, ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services’ continues to be measured by mere access to energy carriers, using binary indicators that inadequately reflect the multi-dimensional nature of the goal. In this work, we describe and apply an alternative framework to track critical dimensions of energy provisioning and household capabilities that aligns mo…
Decent living gaps and energy needs around the world
In recent years, there has been growing interest in defining what exactly constitutes “decent living standards” (DLS)—the material underpinnings of human well-being. We assess the gaps in providing decent health, shelter, nutrition, socialization, and mobility within countries, across the world. Our results show that more people are deprived of DLS than are income-poor, even when numbers are measured against medium income poverty thresholds. We e…
Economics (29 works) · Business (17 works) · Natural resource economics (15 works) · Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies (13 works) · Economic growth (11 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Climate change (10 works) · Engineering (10 works) · Geography (10 works)