On 1 February, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the government’s budget for 2026, which included a new $2.2bn funding push for carbon capture technologies.

In the absence of its new international climate pledge under the Paris Agreement, the budget offers a glimpse into the key climate and energy security priorities of the world’s third-largest emitter, amid increasing geopolitical tensions and trade challenges.

While Sitharaman’s budget speech did not mention climate change directly, she said: “Today, we face an external environment in which trade and multilateralism are imperilled and access to resources and supply chains are disrupted.” 

Sitharaman emphasised that “new technologies are transforming production systems while sharply increasing demands on water, energy and critical minerals”.

The budget sets out: support for the mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths; import duty exemptions for nuclear power equipment; and support for renewables, particularly rooftop solar. 

However, unlike in some previous years, the 2026 budget does not include specific climate adaptation measures.

Below, Carbon Brief runs through five key climate- and energy-focused announcements from the budget.

• Carbon capture, utilisation and storage
• Critical minerals and rare earth ‘corridors’
• Nuclear energy
• Renewables
• Adaptation

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage

The biggest climate-related budget announcement was $2.2bn to support carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies in India over the next 5 years. 

These are technologies that capture carbon dioxide (CO2) as it is released, then use or store it underground or under the sea.

This funding is aimed at decarbonising five of India’s high-emitting industrial sectors – power, steel, cement, refineries and chemicals. These sectors are “staring at the risk” of coming under the EU’s carbon adjustment mechanism (CBAM), even after a recent EU-India trade deal, according to Sitharaman.

The funding is meant to align with a roadmap released last year that sees CCUS as a “core technological pillar” of India’s 2070 net-zero strategy, particularly for “decarbonising sectors where viable alternatives are limited”, notes the government’s roadmap.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report, however, the need for CCUS to mitigate industrial emissions “may be overestimated”, compared to measures such as energy and material efficiency and electrification.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Dr Vikram Vishal, a professor of earth sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B),, describes the budget move as a “big welcome step for industrial decarbonisation and India’s net-zero ambitions as a whole”. 

Vishal says that the funding could go towards getting “big demonstration plants to near-commercial plants” that could entail even bigger investments in the future.

He tells Carbon Brief:

“India is blessed with both onshore and offshore availability for carbon storage. But while utilisation exists, storage has not happened, per se, even at a decent scale. We [would] need to build transportation infrastructure from the point source of capture at scale, on land and offshore. While offshore storage is very low risk, onshore presents a closer proximity to emission sources.”

However, that could also mean closer proximity to densely populated or protected areas.

Vishal adds that India has a very large theoretical storage potential, even a quarter of which would allow for up to 150bn tonnes of CO2 to be stored. This could sustain CCUS for hundreds of years, Vishal says, adding: “And by that time, the energy transition would have happened, right?”

Back to top

Critical minerals and rare-earth ‘corridors’

Mining, sourcing and processing “critical minerals” and rare earths is another key area of India’s 2026 budget.

It proposes establishing “dedicated rare-earth corridors” in the “mineral-rich” coastal states of Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to “promote mining, processing, research and manufacturing”. These corridors are intended to complement a $815m rare-earth permanent-magnet scheme announced in November.

In addition, the budget supports “incentivising prospecting and exploration” for rare-earth minerals, such as monazite, as well as others that the government wants to include in its list of “critical minerals”. 

Last week, for instance, India classified coking coal – which is predominantly used in making steel – as a “critical and strategic mineral”, removing regulatory measures such as the need to consult affected communities before developing new mines.  

Sehr Raheja, programme officer at New Delhi thinktank Centre for Science Environment, tells Carbon Brief that “moving up the critical-minerals value chain” is “increasingly essential” for the energy transition in developing countries. 

She adds that some of the measures announced in India’s budget “point in that direction”, explaining:

“Globally, developing countries often stay stuck in the extraction stages of value chains and capture the least value. While duty exemptions for critical mineral processing and battery manufacturing signal intent to build domestic manufacturing capacity, t​​he extent to which these new efforts deliver sustained value will only become apparent over time.”

Rahul Basu, research director at the Goa Foundation, which advocates for “intergenerational equity” in mining, tells Carbon Brief:

“Rare earths are not particularly rare. What is difficult is separating and refining them. China imports ore from around the world, including [the] US. Their competitive advantage lies in processing, including the ability to tolerate high pollution levels.

“India should perfect the processing technology with imported ores first. It is the critical piece. Not mining. We seem to want to mine the same beaches that are already seeing sea-level rise.”

Back to top

Nuclear energy

The Indian government has also lifted customs duties on imports of nuclear power equipment within the 2026 budget.

Under the changes, equipment for all nuclear power plants will not be subject to customs duties until 2035, irrespective of capacity.

The announcement follows India enacting a landmark new nuclear act, dubbed the “Shanti” act, in December 2025. This seeks to privatise and invite foreign participation in the country’s nuclear energy sector, which has been largely state-run for decades and has a long history of public protests over safety and land-acquisition concerns.

The Shanti act – which is an acronym for “sustainable harnessing and advancement of nuclear energy for transforming India” – aims to help India increase its nuclear capacity tenfold to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2047.

This coincides with 100 years since India’s independence and is “the year India aims to attain developed-nation status”, according to prime minister Narendra Modi.

Back to top

Renewables

Support for renewables in India’s budget this year is significant, but “uneven”, experts tell Carbon Brief.

Allocations to India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) grew by 24% to a “record high” in the 2026 budget, with the bulk going to the prime minister’s flagship rooftop solar scheme. The government also cut import duties on lithium-ion cells for battery storage systems, as well as on inputs for solar-panel glass manufacturing. 

However, Vibhuti Garg, South Asia director for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, tells Carbon Brief that spending on wind energy and – “more critically” – on transmission and energy storage has either “stagnated or declined” this year. 

Garg says grid infrastructure is “fundamental” to renewable expansion. She explains:

“Transmission infrastructure and storage are fundamental to integrating higher shares of renewable energy into the grid. As renewable penetration rises, these elements become not optional but indispensable, and the current level of support falls short of what is required.”

Back to top

Adaptation

The budget does not announce any specific adaptation measures or schemes, although it does mention a plan to develop and rejuvenate reservoirs and water bodies and to “strengthen” fisheries value chains in coastal areas.

The budget does not mention or include measures related to heat stress or its impact on productivity and workers in sectors such as agriculture.

According to India’s national economic survey tabled ahead of the budget, adaptation and “resilience-related” domestic spending “surged” from 3.7% of the country’s GDP in 2016-17 to 5.6% in 2022-23.

Yet, unlike earlier budgets, allocations to and expenditure from India’s National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change are not separately visible in the 2026 document. 

Harjeet Singh, climate adaptation expert and founding director at the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, tells Carbon Brief that this budget was a “missed opportunity” and a response “not commensurate to the needs [for adaptation] on [the] ground or investment at the scale of crisis that we are facing”.

Singh adds that it fails to recognise the “huge” economic impacts already being felt in India. He says:

“If a budget doesn’t recognise how climate change is already eroding India’s development – causing huge economic losses – and is going to affect our GDP growth, it means that you aren’t really acting, or nudging states to do more.

“It was a missed opportunity to tell the world that we do see adaptation as a problem and we are acting on it, but we also need international cooperation.”

Back to top

Q&A: How countries are using biofuels to meet their climate targets

Energy

|

08.10.25

Explainer: What is China’s ‘Shenzhen model’ for low-carbon transition in cities?

China Policy

|

03.06.25

Infographic: How ‘digital sequence information’ can generate funds for biodiversity

Explainers

|

20.02.25

Q&A: How Denmark plans to tax agriculture emissions to meet climate goals

EU policy

|

09.07.24

The post Five key climate and energy announcements in India’s budget for 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Five key climate and energy announcements in India’s budget for 2026

As the world heats up, sport is becoming more dangerous. Many amateur athletes risk their lives running in more extreme temperatures and, even at the elite level, some have collapsed, asking officials what happens if they die in the heat of the Summer Olympics. But how are the Winter Games impacted?

For snow sports – which will be showcased when the Winter Olympics start in the Italian Alps this week – climate change may not be as life-threatening but it is a major risk to their viability. 

Many ski slopes already have to produce expensive artificial snow for much of the winter. A 2024 study found that the list of cities which are reliably cold enough to host a Winter Olympics will fall from 87 to 52 by the 2050s. For the Paralympics, which are typically held in warmer March, the threat is even worse.

But like any big event, the Winter Olympics contribute to climate change too. A report by Scientists for Global Responsibility estimates that the carbon footprint of the 2026 Games will be similar to the annual emissions of Somalia.

On top of that, the organisers of the Milano Cortina Games have drawn criticism from green groups for partnering with Eni, an Italian energy multinational whose oil and gas production has led it to be ranked as the world’s 34th highest greenhouse gas-emitting company.

For more than 16 years, Julie Duffus has worked on Olympic sustainability – first, with the organisers of London 2012, then Rio 2016 and currently as the head of sustainability at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which picks Olympic host cities and works with them to put on the Games.

Climate Home News asked Duffus how the Winter Olympics are coping with the climate crisis and what organisers are doing to reduce their role in heating up the planet.

Q: Is climate change threatening the Winter Olympics?

A: We’re certainly not sitting here in denial that climate change is impacting – not just the Games actually – but all of us around the world. For years, we’ve been doing research on the impact of climate change on the Games and the future host territories. There are some scenarios where the snow is retreating and we need to address that seriously. So this is definitely something that is on our radar and that we are taking very seriously.

Q: Are there plans to produce artificial snow for these Winter Olympics? And, if so, how green is that? What energy has been used to produce that?

Technical snow, as it’s called, has been produced now for decades and it’s not just something that’s produced for an Olympic Games. If you go skiing pretty much anywhere in the world now, a lot of them will rely on technical snow.

But Milano Cortina 2026 is significantly reducing that amount of technical snow compared to previous Games. And a lot of innovation has gone into the development of the snow machines. They’re working on HVO biofuels for the first time – so this is a very nice legacy that we will leave behind for these communities that rely on winter sports.

The snow machines also have sensors so that they can track the depth of the snow that’s fallen versus the technical snow, so they can reduce quite significantly the amount of technical snow that needs to be made. And that’s a first and this is what we love about the Games because it’s pushing innovation for the future of these communities.

Q: What are the organisers doing to reduce the greenhouse gas impact from the construction of venues?

A: The most effective way to cut construction emissions is to avoid unnecessary construction in the first place – and that’s exactly what Milano Cortina is doing.

For this Games, around 85% of the competition venues are already existing. That includes some iconic world-class venues, with a few even used back at the Olympic Games in Cortina in 1956. By relying heavily on what already exists, organisers reduce construction and related emissions that would come from any large-scale development.

This is in line with IOC’s strategy to reduce the climate impact of the Games by building less. The strategy is to adapt the Games to the host, not the other way around, and to encourage organisers to use what’s already there, adding new infrastructure only when it’s genuinely needed in the long-term and for the benefit of its communities.

Q: And how about the greenhouse gas impact from people travelling to the Games?

A: Bringing people together to celebrate sport and unity requires travel, and travel is a source of emissions for any Games. Spectator travel is also included in the IOC’s carbon methodology, so these emissions will be measured and reported transparently after the Games. The IOC delegation are travelling by train from Switzerland, and teams will move between Milan and Cortina using public transport.

At the same time, both the hosts are working to use the Games as a catalyst for public transport improvements – through upgrades to existing train and metro lines, making transport more accessible, and, as we’ve seen in many past Games editions, extending public transport services in ways that benefit host communities well beyond the event.

Q: Scientists for Global Responsibility have called for spectators who travel by train, coach or car to get cheaper tickets than those fly. Would you consider that?

A: We are currently researching many options to reduce our transport impacts. Both the IOC and the Organising Committee’s carbon management plans have transport as an important element, with spectators covered by the Organising Committee’s plan.

Q: Over 20,000 people have signed a petition against the Games being sponsored by Italian oil and gas company Eni. Do you think this partnership will accelerate climate change by promoting a fossil fuel company?

A: We’re currently at a stage in the world, not just the Games, of a transition. Eni is a domestic partner of the Milano Cortina 2026 Organising Committee, who are working with them on that transition, focusing on renewable energy and HVO biofuels.

We have to face the reality that the world needs to transition and the support that we can do to promote greener renewables sources of energy is what’s needed.

The legacy after the Games is that these communities are now connected to green energy and the renewable energy grid. So we need to be open to the fact that we do need to transition away from fossil fuels – but transition to green, stable renewable energy.

The post Q&A: How are the Winter Olympics cutting emissions and adapting to climate change? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Q&A: How are the Winter Olympics cutting emissions and adapting to climate change?

Installations of solar power in Africa jumped 54% in 2025, new data shows, marking the fastest annual growth on record, driven by governments and development agencies deploying utility-scale projects and households and businesses putting in rooftop and commercial systems. 

A new report published by the Global Solar Council (GSC), a nonprofit trade body, shows that Africa installed around 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of new solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity last year, topping the previous record set in 2023 and outperforming initial predictions.

Utility-scale projects accounted for around 56% of reported installations in Africa in 2025, while distributed solar made up an estimated 44%. However, the report notes that rooftop, commercial and distributed capacity – which refers to small-scale solar generation usually situated near where the electricity is used – is significantly under-reported because of limited data.

The GSC said recent soaring solar equipment imports and deployment trends point to a broader, more diversified market serving two types of energy transition at the same time: government-led solar power projects and privately financed business and residential installations.

For instance, the continent imported 18.2 GW of solar panels in 2025, yet under a medium installation scenario, countries are projected to build just 14.3 GW of mainly utility-scale capacity in 2026 and 2027.

Over the past four years, only about 15% of solar equipment imports have been used in large utility-scale installations, pointing to rapid growth in rooftop, commercial and captive systems that are not fully reflected in official figures, the report said.

It also highlighted the need for greater and faster investment in battery storage, grids and power system flexibility, to improve reliability of supply and support rising industrial and commercial energy demand.

“Solar + storage is the hope of Africa,” said Sonia Dunlop, GSC’s chief executive officer, in a statement on the report. “This is the technology that can bring energy access, sustainable development, green growth and resilience to natural disasters and extreme weather,” she added.

Medium-sized markets expand

Large, established markets for solar power continue to lead the pack in Africa, with the top 10 solar markets accounting for around 90% of new capacity additions in 2025, led by South Africa with 1.6 GW, followed by Nigeria at 803 megawatts (MW), Egypt at 500 MW and Algeria at 400 MW.

However, solar deployment is spreading across a wider group of African countries, the report noted, with a clear shift away from reliance on a handful of early adopters. Several mid-sized and emerging markets made significant gains last year, including Morocco, Zambia, Tunisia, Botswana, Ghana and Chad. 

The report found that eight African countries each installed more than 100 MW of solar capacity in 2025, double the number recorded in 2024, underscoring the pace at which new markets are expanding.

“Africa’s solar boom is remarkable, showing just how quickly we can deploy clean energy when technology, demand and ambition come together,” said Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation. “Solar is becoming more accessible, more efficient, and – most importantly – cheaper every year. It’s encouraging to see this potential being realised across Africa faster than ever before.”

Finance for off-grid falling behind

Despite the rapid growth of distributed solar, financing models have not kept pace. While rooftop solar and microgrids are scaling rapidly, around four-fifths of clean energy finance on the continent still comes from public and development sources geared towards large, government-led projects, the GSC report said.

Private investment in clean energy increased from about $17 billion in 2019 to nearly $40 billion in 2024, but most of this funding is not aimed at supporting smaller solar systems used by homes and businesses. 

These smaller projects need modest loans, shorter repayment periods and financing in local currency, but with current offerings not structured this way, many households and companies struggle to access affordable funding for solar, despite strong demand and falling technology costs.

Southern Africa floods intensified by warming highlight climate injustice, scientists say

Last week, leaders from major solar mini-grid players – including the largest operator Husk Power Systems – said up to $46 billion will be needed by 2030 to meet the electrification targets of 29 African countries under the World Bank-backed Mission 300 initiative. According to Bloomberg, the total would comprise $28 billion in debt, $14 billion in equity and $4.6 billion in grants and subsidies.

Investment needed to unleash growth

The GSC’s medium-term outlook suggests Africa could install over 33 GW of solar capacity by 2029  – more than six times the amount added in 2025 – as markets expand across more countries. 

However, the group warned that the misalignment between funding and market needs risks slowing deployment, raising system costs and limiting the economic value of solar. 

If, on the other hand, reforms align finance, planning and regulation with market realities, solar and storage can deliver not only clean power, but reliability, economic productivity and long-term energy security, the GSC said.

West Africa’s first lithium mine awaits go-ahead as Ghana seeks better deal 

Solar paired with battery storage is critical to delivering affordable, reliable power at the scale required to meet energy demand in Africa, which is expected to grow eight-fold by 2050, said Damilola Ogunbiyi, special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.

However, she added, “more must be done to attract clean energy investment, with mechanisms to spur public, private and philanthropic financing.”

The post Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025