This report provides an in-depth review and critical analysis of the fuelwood, wood balance and household energy studies done in India in the last two decades, and of developments in the commercial energy sector. In all, seven national level, ten state level and five local level studies have been reviewed and summarised. Each study reviewed has been systematically presented in a standard format. This included the purpose, agency and period of survey work, the methodology of collecting consumption and production data, estimated per capita as well as total consumption of domestic energy, the contribution of fuelwood in household energy consumption and its sources of supply. At the end of each summary, comments have been offered on the strength and weakness of the study. The summaries of these studies have been then synthesised to identify the trend in the consumption of domestic energy and also the reliability level of firewood statistics. The consumption of fuelwood has been analysed in relation to availability of forests/tree resource, urbanisation and income level. The impact of fuelwood collection on depletion of forest resource has also been examined in specific areas and an approach to identify fuelwood hot spots has been suggested. The report also provides a synoptic view of the various programmes undertaken by the government to meet the fuelwood needs of the country.