3 min readGayaMar 26, 2026 07:43 AM IST
India’s carbon dioxide emissions grew by just 0.7 per cent in the year 2025, the slowest growth in more than two decades, a new analysis has found.
Emissions from the power sector, which accounts for almost half of India’s CO2 emissions, fell by about 3.8 per cent in 2025, and could have been the major contributor to the slowdown in overall emissions for the year, according to the analysis done by Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) for Carbon Brief, a UK-based online publication focused on climate science, policy and energy.
India’s CO2 emissions have grown between 4 and 11 per cent in recent years — amongst the fastest rates in the world. The 0.7 per cent growth in 2025 was the lowest since 2001, except for the Covid years, the analysis said.
Carbon dioxide accounts for nearly 80 per cent of India’s total greenhouse gas emissions. A slowdown in the growth rate of India’s emissions is a global good news from the environmental perspective since the country is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But it could also be an indicator of sluggishness in the Indian economy, or a slump in industrial activity and demand.
While official emissions data takes years to get prepared and compiled — the latest official data on India’s emissions pertain to 2020 — studies like the one by CREA use a variety of indicators, like periodic data on power generation, industrial production and fuel consumption, to estimate the country’s emissions.
The analysis attributed the 3.8 per cent fall in emissions from the power sector to two reasons — a record growth in expansion of renewable energy like solar and wind, and a decline in growth of power demand, which had come down from an average of about 7.4 per cent between 2019 and 2023 to 1 per cent last year. A relatively mild summer which lowered the demand for air-conditioners and fairly good monsoon had contributed to the slowdown in power demand.
India installed more than 48 GW of new renewable energy capacity in 2025, about 70 per cent more than what it did the previous year. The rapid expansion has ensured that over 50 per cent of India’s total installed electricity capacity is now based on non-fossil fuel sources. The country is planning to further increase this share to 60 per cent by 2035, according to the new decisions announced by the government on Wednesday.
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The small increase in India’s CO2 emissions in 2025 was largely the result of strong growth in steel and cement sectors, the analysis said. Both these sectors are highly carbon intensive and major contributors of CO2 emissions. Steel production in India increased by 8 per cent and cement grew by 10 per cent, the analysis said.
The increase in emissions from steel and cement outweighed the decline seen in the power sector, it said.
