The latest round of country climate plans ‘barely move the needle’ on future warming, the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned.
Executive director Inger Anderson made the comments as UNEP published its 16th annual assessment of the global “emissions gap”.
The report sets out the gap between where global emissions are headed – based on announced national policies and pledges – and what is needed to meet international temperature targets.
It finds that the latest round of national climate plans – which were due to the UN this year under Paris Agreement rules – will have a “limited effect” on narrowing this emissions gap.
Currently, the world is on track for 2.3-2.5C of warming this century if all national emissions-cutting plans out to 2035 are implemented in full, according to the report.
In a statement, UNEP executive director Inger Anderson said: “While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough.”
A decade on from the Paris Agreement, the UN agency credits the climate treaty for its “pivotal” role in lowering global temperature projections and driving a rise of renewable energy technologies, policies and targets.
Nevertheless, it warns that countries’ failure to cut emissions quickly enough means the world is “very likely” to breach the Paris Agreement’s aspirational 1.5C temperature limit “this decade”.
It urges countries to make any “overshoot” of the 1.5C warming target “temporary and minimal”, so as to reduce damages to people and ecosystems, as well as future reliance on “risky and costly” carbon removal methods.
Among the other key findings of the report are that China’s emissions could peak in 2025, while the impact of recent climate policy reversals in the US are likely to be outweighed by lower emissions in other countries in the coming years.
(See Carbon Brief’s detailed coverage of previous reports in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.)
Greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow
The UNEP report finds that global emissions of greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases (F-gases) – reached a record 57.7bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e) in 2024. This marks a 2.3% increase compared to 2023 emissions.
This increase is “high” compared to the rise of 1.6% recorded between 2022 and 2023, the report says.
This rate of increase is more than four times higher than the average annual emissions growth rate throughout the 2010s, the report notes, and is comparable with the 2.2%-per-year rate seen in the 2000s.
The chart below shows total greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2024.
It illustrates that “fossil CO2” (black), driven by the combustion of coal, oil and gas, is the largest contributor to annual emissions and the main driver of the increase in recent decades, accounting for around 69% of current emissions.
Methane (grey) plays the second largest role. Meanwhile, emissions from nitrous oxide (blue) fluoride gases (orange) and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF, in green) make up 24% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
The report notes that all “all major sectors and categories” of greenhouse gas emissions saw an increase in 2024. For example, fossil CO2 emissions increased by 1.1% between 2023 and 2024.
However, it highlights that deforestation and land-use emissions played a “decisive” role in the overall increase last year. According to the report, net LULUCF CO2 emissions rose by a fifth – some 21% – between 2023 and 2024.
This spike is in contrast to the past decade, the report notes, where emissions from land-use change have “trended downwards”.
It says one of the reasons for the increase in LULUCF emissions over 2023-24 is the rise in emissions from tropical deforestation and degradation in South America, which were among the highest recorded since 1997.
The authors also break down changes in greenhouse gases by country or country group. They note that the six largest emitters in the world are China, the US, India, the EU, Russia and Indonesia.
The report finds that, when emissions from land use are excluded, emissions from the G20 countries accounted for 77% of the overall increase in emissions over 2023-24. Meanwhile, the “least developed countries” group contributed only 3% of the increase.
The graph below shows contributions to the change in greenhouse gas emissions between 2023 and 2024 for the five highest-emitting countries and groups, as well as for the rest of the G20 countries (purple), the rest of the world (grey), LULUCF globally (green) and international transport (dark blue).
The bottom horizontal black line shows the 56.2GtCO2e emitted in 2023. The size of each bar indicates the change in emissions between 2023 and 2024. The top horizontal black line shows the 57.7GtCO2e emitted in 2024.
The chart illustrates how India and China are the countries that recorded the largest individual increase in emissions between 2023 and 2024, while the EU is the only grouping where emissions decreased.
India and China recorded the largest absolute increase in emissions beyond the land sector. However, Indonesia saw the highest percentage increase of 4.6% (compared to 3.6% for India and 0.5% for China). In contrast, emissions from the EU decreased by 2.1%.
New national climate plans fall short
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit national climate plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), to the UN every five years. These documents describe each country’s plans to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
The deadline for countries to submit NDCs for 2035 was February 2025.
(Carbon Brief reported earlier this year that 95% of countries had missed the February deadline and, more recently, that just one-third of new plans submitted by the end of September expressed support for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.)
By September 2025, 64 parties had submitted or announced their new NDCs. UNEP says that 60 of these countries accounted for 63% of global emissions. Meanwhile, only 13 countries, accounting for less than 1% of global emissions, had updated their emissions reduction targets for 2030.
Writing in the foreword to the report, UNEP’s Inger Andersen says that “many hoped [the pledges] would demonstrate a step change in ambition and action to lower greenhouse gas emissions and avoid an intensification of the climate crisis that is hammering people and economies”. However, she adds that “this ambition and action did not materialise”.
The report emphasises that “immediate and stringent emissions reductions” are the “fundamental ingredient” for meeting the Paris temperature goal of keeping warming this century to well-below 2C and making efforts to keep it to 1.5C.
However, it adds that the new NDCs and “current geopolitical situation” do not provide “promising signs” that these emissions cuts will happen.
The report presents a “deep dive” into the emissions reduction targets of G20 countries – the world’s largest economies, which are collectively responsible for more than three-quarters of global emissions.
The analysis investigates NDCs and policy updates as of November 2024.
None of the G20 countries have strengthened their targets for 2030, according to the report. However, it finds that seven G20 countries have submitted NDCs with emissions reduction targets for 2035. The EU, China and Turkey have announced targets, but had not yet submitted 2035 climate plans to the UN by the time the report was finalised.
According to the report, the new NDCs and policy updates of G20 countries lead to a reduction in projected emissions by 2035. However, these reductions are “relatively small and surrounded by significant uncertainty”, it cautions.
Nevertheless, UNEP says there are a number of G20 countries whose emissions projections have seen “significant changes” in this year’s report, including the US and China.
For the first time, the projections in the gap report suggest that China will see its emissions peak in 2025, followed by a reduction in emissions of 0.3-1.4GtCO2e by 2030. According to the report, this is due to the growth of renewable electricity generation in the country “outpacing” overall power demand growth.
In contrast, the authors warn that projections for US emissions in 2030 have increased by 1GtCO2e compared to last year’s assessment, mainly due to “policy reversals”.
(Since taking office in January 2025, Donald Trump has triggered the process of withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement for the second time and dismantled US climate policies implemented under Joe Biden. The UNEP report does not specifically mention Trump or his administration.)
However, it finds that lower greenhouse gas projections for China and several other countries outweigh the higher projections in the US by 2030.
Overall, the report projects that, under current climate policies, annual emissions from G20 countries will drop to 35GtCO2 by 2030 and 33Gt by 2035.
China is the largest contributor to this projected reduction, followed by the EU then the US, according to the report. (Emissions from the US are still projected to decline, albeit much more slowly than previously expected.)
It adds that other G20 members are on “clear downward emission trends”, noting that “several more” might see emissions “peak or plateau between 2030 and 2035” under current policies.
The graph below shows the historical emissions (light blue) and projected emissions (dark blue) of the G20 members, along with their NDCs for 2030 and 2035 (shown by the diamonds) and net-zero targets (circles).
The graph shows that some countries, such as Turkey and Russia, are projected to cut emissions more rapidly than they have pledged under their NDCs. In contrast, other nations, such as the UK and Canada, are anticipated to fall short of the emissions-reduction goals set out in their national climate plans.
New NDCs and policy updates lower expected emissions in 2035
The report conducts an “emissions gap” analysis that compares the emissions that would be released if countries follow their climate policies or pledges, with the levels that would be needed in order to hold warming below 2C, 1.8C and 1.5C with limited or no overshoot.
The “gap” between these two values shows how much further emissions would need to be reduced in order to limit warming below global temperature thresholds.
To explore potential rises in global temperature over the coming years and decades, the report authors use a simple climate model, or “emulator”, called FaIR. They assess a range of potential futures:
- A “current policy” scenario, which assumes that countries follow policies adopted as of November 2024. This scenario also assumes the full implementation of announced policy rollbacks in the US as of September 2025.
- An “unconditional NDCs” scenario, which assumes the implementation of NDCs that do not depend on external support. This scenario includes the US NDC, as withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will not be complete until January 2026.
- A “conditional NDCs” scenario that further assumes the implementation of NDCs that depend on external support, such as climate finance from wealthier countries.
The report also analyses two “scenario extensions”, which explore the post-2035 implications of current policies, NDCs and net-zero pledges:
- A “current policies continuing” scenario, which “follows current policies to 2035 and assumes a continuation of similar efforts thereafter”.
- A “conditional NDCs plus all net-zero pledges” scenario, which is “the most optimistic scenario included”. This scenario assumes the “conditional NDC” scenario is achieved until 2035 and then all net-zero or other long-term low emissions developments strategies are followed thereafter, excluding that of the US.
The authors note that emissions projections for 2030 under the “current policy” scenario in this year’s report are slightly larger than they were in last year’s assessment. The authors say this is “mainly” due to policy rollbacks in the US.
In contrast, this report projects slightly lower emissions for 2035 than last year’s report, as policy changes in the US are offset by “improved 2035 policy estimates” in other countries.
The authors find that the new NDCs have “no effect” on the 2030 gap when compared to last year’s assessment.
According to the report, implementing unconditional NDCs would result in emissions in 2030 being 12GtCO2e above the level required to limit warming to 2C. This number rises to 20GtCO2e for a 1.5C scenario.
Also implementing conditional NDCs would shrink these gaps by around 2GtCO2e, the report says.
(The authors note that these numbers are slightly smaller than in last year’s report, but say this is not a reflection of “strengthening of 2030 NDC targets”, but instead from “updated emission trends by modelling groups and methodological updates”.)
The report adds that the formal withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement for a second time will mean that emissions laid out in the US NDC are not counted. This will increase the emissions gap by 2GtCO2e, the report says.
According to the report, the new NDCs do narrow the 2035 emissions gap compared to last year’s assessment. The report says:
“The unconditional and conditional NDC gaps with respect to 2C and 1.5C pathways are 6bn and 4bn tonnes of CO2e lower than last year, respectively.”
This means that the “emissions gap” between a world that follows conditional NDCs and one that limits warming to 2C above pre-industrial temperatures is 6GtCO2e smaller in this year’s report than last year’s. Similarly, the gap between the “conditional NDCs” scenario and the 1.5C scenario is now 4GtCO2e smaller.
Despite the improvement, the report warns that the emissions gap “remains large”.
The graph below shows historical and projected global emissions over 2015-35 under the current policy (dark blue), unconditional NDCs (mid blue), conditional NDCs (light blue), 2C (pink) and 1.5C (red) scenarios.
The report also warns that there is an “implementation gap”, as countries are currently not on track to achieve their NDC targets.
The authors say the implementation gap is currently 5GtCO2e for unconditional NDCs by 2030 and 7GtCO2e for conditional NDCs, or around 2GtCO2e lower once the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is complete next year.
‘Limited’ progress on reducing future warming
UNEP calculates that the full implementation of both conditional and unconditional NDCs would reduce emissions in 2035 by 12% and 15%, respectively, on 2019 levels. However, these percentages shrink to 9% and 11% if the US NDC is discounted.
The projections suggest there will be a “peak and decline” in global emissions. However, the report says the large range of estimates that remain around global emissions reductions means there is “continued uncertainty” around when peaking could happen.
Projected emissions cuts by 2035 are “far smaller” than the 35% reduction required to align with a 2C pathway and the even steeper cut of 55% required for a 1.5C pathway, the report says.
The authors say that temperature projections set out in this year’s report are only “slightly lower” – at 0.3C – than last year’s assessment.
It notes that new policy projections and NDC targets announced since the last assessment have lowered warming projections by 0.2C. “Methodological updates” are responsible for the remaining 0.1C.
Furthermore, the forthcoming withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement would reverse 0.1C of this “limited progress”, the report notes.
Responding to these figures in the report’s foreword, UNEP’s Anderson says the new pledges have “barely moved the needle” on temperature projections.
The chart below shows the different warming projections under four of the scenarios explored in the report.
It shows how, under the current policies pathway, there is a 66% chance of warming being limited to 2.8C. In a scenario where efforts are made to meet conditional NDCs in full, there is the same probability that warming could be capped at 2.3C.
In the most optimistic scenario – where all NDCs and net-zero targets are implemented – there is a 66% chance that warming could be constrained to 1.9C. (This projection remains unchanged since last year’s report.)
The report warns that, across all scenarios, the central warming projections would see global warming surpass 1.5C “by several tenths of a degree” by mid-century. And it calculates there is a 21-33% likelihood that warming could exceed 2C by 2050.
Nevertheless, it stresses that the Paris Agreement has been “pivotal” in reducing temperature projections. Policies at the time of the treaty’s adoption would have put the world on track for warming “just below 4C”.
1.5C limit could be exceeded within a decade
UNEP notes that its updated temperature projections underscore an “uncomfortable truth” that surpassing the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit is “increasingly near”.
The limit – which refers to long-term warming over a pre-industrial baseline and not average warming in any particular year – could be exceeded “within the next decade”, it says. However, the report emphasises that it remains “technically possible” to return to 1.5C by 2100.
Global inaction on emissions in the 2020s means that 1.5C pathways explored in previous emission gap reports and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment cycle are “no longer fully achievable”, according to UNEP.
Moreover, a lack of “stringent emissions cuts” in recent years means climate pathways with “limited” overshoot of 1.5C are also “slipping out of reach”, the authors say.
A future of “higher and potentially longer” overshoot of 1.5C is “increasingly likely”, they warn.
Climate “overshoot” pathways are those where temperatures exceed 1.5C temporarily, before being brought back below the threshold using techniques that remove carbon from the atmosphere.
(For more on climate overshoot, read Carbon Brief’s detailed write-up of a recent conference dedicated to the concept.)
Elsewhere, the report notes the remaining “carbon budget” for limiting warming to 1.5C without any overshoot of the goal will “likely be exhausted” before 2030.
(The carbon budget is the total amount of CO2 that scientists estimate can be emitted if warming is to be kept below a particular temperature threshold. Earlier this year, the Indicators of Global Climate Change report estimated the remaining carbon budget had declined by three-quarters between the start of 2020 and the start of 2025.)
The graphic below illustrates the percentage likelihood of limiting warming under 1.5C, 2C and 3C under the four scenarios set out in the report.
It shows how the chances of limiting warming to below 1.5C throughout the 21st century is close to zero in all but the most optimistic scenario. In the scenario where conditional NDCs and net-zero pledges are met, the chances of limiting temperatures below the goal is just 21%.
The report stresses that it is critical to limit “magnitude and duration” of overshoot to avoid “greater losses for people and ecosystems”, higher adaptation costs and a heavier reliance on “costly and uncertain carbon dioxide removal”.
Roughly 220GtCO2 of carbon removals will be required to reverse every 0.1C of overshoot, according to the report. This is equivalent to five years of global annual CO2 emissions.
The report also warns that it is “highly unlikely” that all risks and hazards will “reverse proportionately” after a period of temperature overshoot.
UNEP states that pursuing the 1.5C temperature goal is nevertheless a “legal, moral and political obligation” for governments regardless of whether warming exceeds the target.
The UN agency emphasises that the 2015 Paris Agreement establishes “no target date or expiration” for its temperature goal – and points to the International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion that 1.5C remains the “primary target” of the climate treaty.
The post UNEP: New country climate plans ‘barely move needle’ on expected warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UNEP: New country climate plans ‘barely move needle’ on expected warming
What happens when a love of marine life meets a playful imagination?
Sydney artist, illustrator and children’s author Sha’an d’Anthes, better known as Furry Little Peach, has teamed up with Greenpeace to create Happy Ocean Happy Planet: a joyful celebration of the extraordinary creatures that call our oceans home.
Sha’an felt inspired to create an illustration celebrating the beauty and resilience of marine life. Its hopeful message, A Happy Ocean is a Happy Planet, sparked a special collaboration with Greenpeace and a limited-edition t-shirt designed to help protect the oceans that inspired it.
The exclusive Furry Little Peach tee is available as a gift to new regular Greenpeace donors who give $30 or more and make at least three donations. By becoming a regular giver, you’ll help Greenpeace campaign for ocean protection.
ARTIST INTERVIEW: Sha’an d’Anthes (Furry Little Peach)
Sha’an shares the story behind the artwork, the local marine creatures featured in the design and why hope can be such a powerful force for action.
Hi Sha’an! Can you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
My name is Sha’an d’Anthes, I also go by the pseudonym Furry Little Peach and I’m an illustrator, artist and children’s author based in Sydney, Australia. I love creating joyful, vibrant and nostalgic art that looks at the world through the lens of childlike wonder.
What do you love about drawing animals and nature?
I love all of the different shapes, colour and narrative you get to explore when drawing animals and nature. I’m also a city-slicker these days, and so I think that my work is a sort of escapism (for myself and hopefully for my audience).
How did the Greenpeace collaboration come about?
I went to the premiere of David Attenborough’s documentary Ocean, and felt compelled to create something to share the message of the film. This t-shirt is actually based off of that illustration including the tagline in I included when I shared it “A Happy Ocean is a Happy Planet”. I’m so grateful Greenpeace approached me for the project – it was a blast.
Where did you start when creating the Happy Ocean Happy Planet design?
The Happy Ocean tee starts the same as all of my work – with a brainstorm/braindump and really loose concept sketches.
How did you choose the animals for the illustration?
I actually asked Greenpeace to help me with the research of local marine life and they were so accommodating. They very quickly delivered me a huge list of local species of fish, mammals and coral and I just went through and looked up each creature and curated a little group of sea life that I thought would look sweet together – a mix of sizes, types, colours, textures and shapes.
What did you use to create the artwork?
So much of my work is traditional, but when it comes to things like t-shirts I always use digital drawing programs because I like to draw each colour in a separate layer which requires me to jump in and out of layers because it allows me to control colour and printing. When working digitally I always sketch in Procreate (an Australian digital art app), and then with this project I created final art in Adobe Fresco because it called for a vector graphic (an image that can be blown up to any size).
Do you have a favourite creature in the design?
I love painting Humpback Whales and always have, but I also have a soft spot for the sweet little Jelly Blubber jellyfish.
What did you want people to feel when they saw the artwork?
I specifically wanted to focus on the outcome that all of us want to see – a happy, thriving ocean where creatures are given the time and space to balance themselves. I feel that even when tackling tough subjects, leaning into hope is my natural inclination. As long as we have hope that things can be better, we will continue to take action.
What was the most fun part of creating it?
I actually documented the entire process of this project in a studio vlog on YouTube – and you can see how much fun I’m having doing final art jumping between layers and building the image. I had just come off completing final art for two books which are multi-year long projects, so being able to do a project that from start to finish in just a few days was really freeing at the time.
What does a “happy ocean” mean to you?
An ocean that given the time and space to repair and balance itself. Something I really took away from David Attenborough’s Ocean is that ocean ecosystems are actually really good at repairing themselves if we just let them do their thing.
How can people get their hands on the t-shirt?
The shirt is a reward for regular givers to Greenpeace – those who commit to at least 3 months of donations will receive the tee as a gift. Read about how at http://act.gp/flp-tee
How is Greenpeace helping to make our oceans happier places?
They have a deep focus on the health and happiness of our oceans through advocating for the set up of marine sanctuaries, holding big ocean polluters to account and calling for a ban on deep sea mining.
What are you working on next?
I will be jumping headfirst into Peachtober – an annual daily art challenge I run each year in October, if there are any artists reading this it’s a great time so please come join! In terms of publications my next picture book The Late Bird will be out in February 2027 (published by Harper Collins US) and then I have an creative activity book for adults coming out next August with Chronicle US and Penguin Australia. Otherwise you can always check out what I’m tinkering away with in my studio on Instagram and YouTube.
Climate Change
AI giant Anthropic’s first Australian data centre deal an “egregious” example of Big Tech double talk
SYDNEY, Thursday 17 September 2026 — Greenpeace Australia Pacific has slammed AI giant Anthropic’s deal for its first Australian site in Queensland’s Western Downs, the heart of coal seam gas country, saying the project will entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution.
The expected electricity demand from the data centre site, situated in the middle of the Western Downs coal seam gas fields, is comparable to 1.5 million Australian households. Greenpeace’s report Energy Vampires: The AI data centres draining Australia called for a moratorium on frenzied data centre development until appropriate guardrails are in place.
Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is an egregious example of Big Tech giants being given carte blanche to drain energy and water, and use polluting gas to fuel their hyperscale data centres.
“AI and Big Tech corporations claim to bring new renewable energy to the grid, while blatantly planning to power their operations with polluting fossil fuels.
“Planning documents show the first stage of this behemoth project could be powered by ‘behind the metre’ gas — the same playbook AI companies have used in the US, leading to a 20% increase in climate pollution from electricity. Now these companies want to bring their cowboy plans to Australia and the Federal Government is allowing it.
“If they plugged into the local grid, the power required would increase Queensland’s electricity grid emissions by around 6.6 million tonnes — an 18% rise. If they build their own gas-fired power plants, this will drive up Queensland’s emissions even more.
“Billions of dollars are now pouring into a massive pipeline of proposed new data centres, of unprecedented size, being built at incredible speed across the country. Australians should be worried about the extreme lack of scrutiny being applied to these projects, and the corporations leading the data centre charge.
“The data centre build-out is happening without the endorsement of the Australian people, yet we are the ones who will pay the price. We can not allow unchecked data centre expansion to derail our renewable energy transition, entrench gas and turbocharge climate pollution — that’s why Greenpeace has called for an urgent moratorium until appropriate guardrails are in place.”
ENDS
Media contact: Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
Climate Change
Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge
A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.
This guest post is by:
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)
Anubha Aggarwal, India analyst at CREA
This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall.
At the same time, both oil and gas consumption have fallen across the nation for two years in a row, helping alleviate the shock of the Hormuz crisis.
Nevertheless, the new six-monthly analysis for Carbon Brief shows that India’s emissions grew by 3.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, due to increases from steel, cement and other sectors.
Other key findings for the first half of 2026 include:
- India’s power-sector emissions flatlined at 2024 levels, after a 2.2% decline in the first half of 2025 and a 2.3% rise in the same period this year.
- Clean energy met all of the 7% rise in India’s electricity demand over the two years, adding 63 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to the total demand of Switzerland.
- India has added 77 gigawatts (GW) of solar in this two-year period, helping meet 60% of the rise in electricity demand overall.
- While fossil-fuel generation stagnated, generators added 8.5GW of new coal capacity, leading to fewer running hours and increased costs to electricity consumers.
- CO2 emissions from oil and gas fell by 7% year-on-year, extending a reduction that began in 2025, despite higher demand for road transport fuels.
- Steel and cement emissions grew by 8% year-on-year, reaching a 23% share of India’s total CO2 in the first half of 2026.
If the pace of India’s clean-energy expansion is to continue, it will need to upgrade its electricity grid, rapidly build out energy storage and boost the flexibility of coal power.
While clean-energy expansion is covering most or all of India’s power-demand growth, the fossil-fuel industry continues to pursue major capital investments.
This includes large amounts of new coal-power capacity, ambitious plans for the conversion of coal-to-chemicals and efforts to boost domestic coking coal production for the steel sector.
While CO2 output from the power sector is flat, with oil and gas in decline, India’s emissions still went up due to the contribution from industry.
India lags behind its competitors – including most large emerging economies – when it comes to electrifying its industrial sector.
Faster progress would enable clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in industry, as well as for power, offering the potential for India to cut its emissions overall.
Flatlining fossils
Last year, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest pace in two decades, according to previous analysis for Carbon Brief.
This sharp slowdown was due to rapid clean-energy growth and flat oil demand, combined with rising emissions from steel and cement.
The first half of 2026 marks a continuation of these trends.
Most strikingly, the ongoing surge in clean-energy generation means that emissions have flatlined in India’s power sector for two years, as shown in the figure below.
Power-sector CO2 was the same in the first half of 2026 as two years earlier, with a small decline in 2025 having been reversed over the same period this year.
Beyond electricity generation, India’s key emitting sectors continued to see divergent trends in the first half of 2026, as some saw ongoing decline while others reached new heights.
This is shown in the figure below, which compares year-on-year changes in emissions during the first half of 2026 with the same periods in 2025, 2024 and the average for 2021-23.
Specifically, emissions grew by 2.3% in the power sector, reversing last year’s decline, while demand for gas and oil products fell for another year.
The biggest increases were for steel and cement, where emissions growth accelerated to 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, well above the recent trend.
Clean-energy growth matches power demand
The period from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026 saw the largest increase in non-fossil power generation on record in India.
This enabled fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from the sector to stay flat, even as electricity consumption increased.
Indeed, this is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall, as shown below.
Over this two-year period, India’s total power generation increased by 7%, some 63TWh, equal to the total consumption of Singapore or Switzerland.
The additional power requirement of 63TWh was met entirely by clean energy. Solar grew by 44TWh, alongside growth from wind (13TWh), nuclear (7TWh) and hydro (8TWh).
Together, clean-energy sources added 70TWh over two years, more than the net increase in demand.
(For comparison, China’s nuclear, wind and solar output increased by 485TWh in 2025.)
The figure below shows that new investments are more than sufficient to maintain this trend, as added power generation from new clean power capacity has stayed above average demand growth for the past 18 months.
Over the past two years, India added 77GW of new solar capacity, 11GW of wind, 5GW of hydro and 0.6GW of nuclear capacity.
Solar power continues to dominate clean-energy growth, but, collectively, the other non-fossil sources still contributed 40% of the overall increase in generation.
One factor in electricity demand growth in 2026 is the El Niño, which delayed the monsoon and intensified heatwaves, driving up cooling demand.
India is accelerating investment in energy storage, which will support further growth in clean power. The National Electricity Plan projected a requirement of 82 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity by 2026-27 and 411GWh by 2031-32.
As of May 2026, the government has issued tenders for around 272GWh of energy storage capacity, including 142GWh of pumped hydro and 133GWh of battery storage systems. Current capacity is 7.5GWh of battery storage and around 60GWh of pumped hydro.
Which states led the clean-power shift?
The fall in power generation from fossil fuels from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026 was concentrated in a few states.
Gujarat saw both the largest reduction in fossil-fuel generation and the largest expansion in clean power, as shown in the figure below.
After Gujarat, the largest increases in clean-power generation were seen in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, which also saw reductions in power generation from fossil fuels.
Several other states saw declines in fossil-fuel generation due to higher net imports, rather than local clean power. These included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab.
Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also succeeded in increasing clean-power generation faster than power demand, thereby contributing to keeping fossil fuel-based power generation stable nationwide across the two-year period. However, they exported much of the increase and consequently saw local increases in power generation from fossil fuels.
The two states with the largest increases in power demand, Maharashtra and Telangana, managed to almost match the rise with growth in clean-power generation.
Fall in oil and gas consumption continues
India’s oil consumption continued to fall during the first half of 2026, dropping 1.3% year-on-year, a slight acceleration from the 0.7% reduction in the same period last year.
While diesel and petrol consumption continued to grow, oil consumption was pulled down overall by declines in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke (a solid derivative of oil used in the cement industry) and industrial feedstocks. Growth of aviation fuel use eased.
Diesel consumption growth accelerated from 1.8% to 4.1% in the first half of the year, supported by higher freight movement and increased agricultural demand, as the delayed monsoon led to greater use of diesel-powered irrigation.
Petrol consumption returned to growth, increasing 6.9% year-on-year after zero growth in the same period in 2025, reflecting sustained growth in passenger and two-wheeler mobility.
A significant increase in ethanol blending shaved a full percentage point off the growth of petrol consumption. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target five years ahead of schedule in 2025-26. (Ethanol blending has faced public opposition.)
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India is also gaining momentum, with EVs adopted in a widening range of categories.
In Delhi, an EV policy was launched to accelerate electrification of the vehicle fleet, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, three-wheelers (auto rickshaws), commercial vehicles and high-mileage segments, alongside expanded charging infrastructure. Higher EV adoption rates will moderate the growth in emissions from petrol consumption in India.
In contrast, aviation fuel demand growth slowed down from 5% to 2%. The slowdown coincided with the strait of Hormuz and wider crisis, which disrupted international aviation through temporary airspace closures and flight cancellations to several Middle Eastern destinations. Elevated aviation fuel prices also increased airline operating costs, contributing to lower fuel demand.
LPG consumption contracted by 7%, after 5.7% growth in the same period last year, amid disruptions in global LPG markets following the Hormuz crisis.
Petcoke consumption fell 9.9%, more than reversing a 9.3% increase in the same period last year. Rising petcoke prices encouraged cement manufacturers to switch to coal.
Consumption of other petroleum products continued to drop, although the pace of decline moderated from 14% in 2025 to 9% in 2026.
Industrial feedstock use was affected by shortages and price increases.
Naphtha demand contracted as import prices nearly doubled and domestic prices increased by around 60%, prompting petrochemical manufacturers to reduce operating rates and suppress demand for imported naphtha.
Bitumen consumption remained subdued due to slower road construction, driven by persistent land acquisition challenges and higher bitumen costs.
Meanwhile, higher light diesel oil (LDO) prices and shortage of LPG led some industrial consumers to switch back to furnace oil in boilers and heaters, despite the higher air pollutant emissions. Supply of fuel oil to industry increased for the same reason.
Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues
Steel and cement output in India grew by 8% and 9%, respectively, year-on-year in the first half of 2026, despite rising input prices and weakening profitability.
The growth in steel and cement was supported in part by increased investment in India’s real estate sector, especially in the second quarter. Steel consumption growth outpaced production, implying that inventories built up last year were tapped.
Despite domestic demand growth, profit margins of Indian steel and cement manufacturers remained under pressure for much of the period due to elevated raw material costs – particularly imported coking coal – and higher freight costs stemming from the Hormuz crisis.
The pressure on prices could dampen growth. Cement prices are expected to rise to levels last seen in the 2021-22 financial year, when Russia’s decision to cut back gas exports to Europe drove a sharp increase in fossil-fuel prices.
Outside the steel, cement and power sectors, coal-consumption growth accelerated to 14% in the first half of 2026, up from 3% last year, as the LPG shortage prompted a shift to coal.
Gas shortages resulted in some additional burning of coal for cooking in March and April. The government officially authorised the hospitality industry to use coal, refuse-derived fuel pellets, biomass and kerosene for one month.
The ceramic and tile industry also requested that the government allow the use of coal gasifiers amid the gas shortage. State governments including Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra also allowed industries to temporarily use alternative fuels, including coal.
India’s industrial energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal. Indian industry has the second-lowest electrification rate in the G20, as shown in the figure below. The share of electricity in total energy consumption in the sector also lags the world average, in terms of both current levels and the rate of increase.
The current low rates of electricity use in Indian industry imply that there is major potential for electrification, using technologies and processes already in place in other countries.
New investments in coal
While the clean-power expansion is starting to meet most or all of India’s electricity demand growth, there are still large investment plans across the coal supply chain.
Some 43GW of coal-power capacity was under construction at the end of June. Additional coal-power capacity is seen as necessary to meet increasing peak loads, even as solar power and energy storage are already playing a role in covering daytime and evening peak demand, respectively. The expansion of energy storage will increase this contribution.
Outside the power sector, India has major ambitions to produce chemical-industry products, such as fertiliser and plastic feedstock, from coal through coal gasification, in pursuit of energy security.
The government is targeting a capacity to process 100m tonnes of coal per year in the next four years, despite the technology for coal gasification still being nascent in India. At present, the only operational use of coal gasification is at Jindal Steel Limited, which is reportedly using syngas in its steel-making process.
Meanwhile, India plans to reduce its average CO2 emissions per tonne of steel by 25% by 2025-26, mainly by reducing the share of coal-based steelmaking.
At the same time, the government is aiming to increase the use of domestic coking coal, which it notified in January this year as a “critical and strategic mineral”. Coal miners and steel companies are reportedly planning to establish additional washeries for coking coal to make it suitable for blending with imported coal for use in steel production.
India is also looking to invest in new coal mines in the near future.
These continued investments in coal gasification, domestic coking coal and new coal mining capacity could lock in coal use across industry for several decades.
Outlook for India’s emissions
Over the two-year period from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026, India has achieved its largest clean-energy expansion on record.
As a result, power-demand growth has been met entirely by clean electricity and CO2 emissions in the sector have flatlined.
This expansion of clean energy also allowed a reduction in fossil-fuel imports for power generation, with the use of imported coal falling 38% and the use of gas by 35%, supporting the energy security aims of the government and reducing exposure to the Hormuz shock.
In order to keep the clean-energy growth going, India would need to overcome multiple obstacles, including expansion of the electricity transmission network, improvements in grid flexibility to accommodate variable renewables and the timely completion of new projects.
For example, renewable power projects totalling 5.3GW missed completion deadlines and are having to pay penalties to the grid operator in order to retain network access.
Curtailment has emerged as an issue, particularly for projects relying on interstate power transmission, pointing to the need to upgrade the network. (Curtailment refers to electricity generation that is “wasted” because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.)
Another obstacle to be overcome if clean energy is to keep growing will be making coal-power plants more flexible, so they can ramp down during high renewable output.
A flexibility plan for coal-power plants has been delayed by more than a year due to persistent regulatory bottlenecks, contributing to the curtailment of renewable energy.
Expanding energy storage has the potential to ease grid and flexibility constraints, while reducing or eliminating the need for adding thermal-power capacity to meet peak loads.
The Central Electricity Authority has proposed that, after June 2027, all new government-owned solar and wind projects would have “mandatory” two-hour battery storage. (This mirrors a policy that was in place in China until early 2025 and was subsequently scrapped, in favour of more market-based approaches.)
For oil and gas, India’s consumption has been flatlining for the past two years, after half a century of continuous growth that was only briefly interrupted by Covid-19.
This has reduced the impacts of the Hormuz crisis on the country’s trade balance, helping close the gap between supply and consumption. But it has entailed disruptive shifts in many oil-dependent sectors.
For example, high prices and fuel shortages due to the Hormuz crisis led state governments to reverse their orders banning the use of dirtier fuels such as fuel oil, kerosene and coal in industries and commercial establishments.
Meanwhile, EV adoption has also begun to influence oil consumption.
Despite the progress in the power sector and reductions in oil consumption, India’s total emissions went up over the past two years due to a major increase in industrial emissions.
Low levels of electricity use in industry mean that growing industrial output results in increasing direct fossil-fuel use and emissions.
Unless the rate of industrial electrification picks up, increases in heavy industry output will continue to translate into increases in fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
About the data
This analysis is based on official monthly data for fuel consumption, industrial production and power generation from different ministries and government institutes.
Coal-power emissions are estimated by combining plant-level coal consumption from the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly coal reports with data on the calorific value and emission factors of coal used at different power plants from the CEA’s CO2 baseline database.
For each station and month, total coal consumption is split into domestic and imported coal using the imported share of coal receipts over a trailing two-month window, found to best reproduce the actual split in data available for 2023.
Consumption is converted to CO2 using each plant’s station-specific gross calorific value from the CEA database and IPCC emission factors for domestic coal, imported coal and lignite. The national-average calorific value is used for recently added plants, for which data is not available in the baseline database.
Coal use at steel and cement plants, as well as process emissions from cement production, are estimated using production indices from the index of eight core industries released monthly by the Office of Economic Adviser, assuming that changes in total fossil-fuel use follow production volumes. These production indices were used to scale fuel use by the sectors in 2022.
To form a basis for using the indices, monthly coal-consumption data for 2022 was constructed for the sectors by combining the annual total coal and petcoke consumption reported in IEA World Energy Balances with monthly production data. This work was set out in a paper by Robbie Andrew, a researcher at Norwegian research institute CICERO, on monthly CO2 emission accounting for India. Monthly petcoke consumption was available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, while coal consumption by the cement industry was calculated by subtracting petcoke use from total fossil-fuel use.
Annual cement-process emissions up to 2025 were also taken from Andrew’s work and scaled using the production indices. This approach better approximated changes in energy use and emissions reported in the IEA World Energy Balances, than did the amounts of coal reported to have been dispatched to the sectors, showing that production volumes are the dominant driver of short-term changes in emissions.
For other sectors – including aluminium, auto, chemical and petrochemical, paper and plywood, pharmaceutical, graphite electrode, sugar, textile, mining, traders and others – coal consumption is estimated based on data on despatch of domestic and imported coal to end users from statistical reports and monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal, as consumption data is not available.
Coal consumption by “captive” coal-power plants – those supplying power to industrial sites, not to the public electricity network – was calculated based on capacity changes from Global Energy Monitor, assuming constant utilisation, as utilisation has been very stable year-to-year, as calculated from Central Electricity Authority data.
The difference between coal consumption and dispatch is stock changes, which are estimated by assuming that the changes in the amount of coal stored at end-user facilities mirror those at coal mines, with end-user inventories excluding power, steel and cement assumed to be 70% of those at coal mines, based on comparisons between our data and the IEA World Energy Balances.
Stock changes at mines are estimated as the difference between production at and dispatch from coal mines, as reported by the Ministry of Coal.
Coal consumption is estimated in two ways for sectors beyond power, steel and cement. Consumption of domestic coal in these other sectors is taken from the monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal. Their consumption of imported coal is estimated from the total imports of thermal coal reported by consultancy Kpler, by subtracting demand for imports at coal-power plants. The basis for this assumption is that steel and cement industries use little imported thermal coal, according to Ministry of Coal data.
Product-by-product consumption data for petroleum products, as well as gas use by sector, is from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
As the fuel dispatch and consumption data is reported as physical volumes – such as tonnes or litres – calorific values are taken from IEA’s World Energy Balance and CO2 emission factors from 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.
The emissions factor for motor oil or petrol was updated, based on the blending percentage of ethanol each year. The ethanol-blending percentage is as reported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
Calorific values are assigned separately to different fuel types, including domestic and imported coal, anthracite and coke, as well as to petrol, diesel and several other oil products.
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Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge
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