India’s CO2 emissions in 2025 grew at slowest rate in two decades

India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions grew by 0.5% in the second half of 2025 and by just 0.7% in the year as a whole, the slowest rate in more than two decades.

This is a sharp slowdown from the growth of 4-11% in the preceding four years and marks the lowest rate of increase since 2001, excluding the impact of Covid in 2020.

This is the second in a new series of half-yearly analysis on India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement, based on official data for fuel use, industrial production and power output.

Other key findings for 2025 as a whole include:

• Emissions in the power sector fell by 3.8% as record clean-energy growth combined with weak electricity demand.
• New clean-energy capacity in 2025 will add a record 90 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity output each year, double the previous record set in 2024.
• The largest reductions in coal power were in the states leading on wind and solar.
• Oil demand grew by 0.4% and gas fell by 4%, far behind recent growth rates.
• Steel production surged by 8% and cement by 10%.
• In total, CO2 emissions went up slightly year-on-year, as increases from steel and cement outweighed the falls in gas demand and coal power.
• Consumption of imported coal at power plants fell by 20%, while gas imports fell by 6% and net oil imports were flat year-on-year, reducing India’s vulnerability to the impacts of the Iran war.