India’s Progress on Climate Targets

India’s progress on Climate Targets has been under scrutiny even after strong compliance with the Paris agreement. Read here to know about the progress, gaps and road ahead for India.

India’s climate performance is increasingly under scrutiny as recent assessments reveal a widening gap between emissions intensity reduction and control of absolute greenhouse gas emissions.

While India has demonstrated strong compliance with its Paris Agreement commitments on a relative basis, translating these gains into absolute emission reductions remains a significant challenge for a rapidly growing economy.

India’s Climate Targets under the Paris Agreement

At the 2015 Paris Climate Summit (COP21), India framed its climate strategy around the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), emphasising its low historical and per capita emissions.

India’s four major climate targets were:

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1. Emissions Intensity Reduction
   • Reduce emissions intensity of GDP by 33–35% from 2005 levels by 2030
2. Energy Transition
   • Achieve 40% non-fossil fuel-based power capacity by 2030
   • Subsequently enhanced to 50%
3. Renewable Energy Expansion
   • Install 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022
4. Forest and Tree Cover
   • Create an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent through forests and tree cover

These targets sought to balance developmental imperatives, energy security, and global climate responsibility.

Progress on climate targets

India has made remarkable progress in reducing emissions per unit of GDP.

• By 2020, emissions intensity had fallen by around 36% compared to 2005, enabling India to meet its original Paris target nearly a decade early.

Key Drivers of Improvement

1. Cleaner Power Mix: Rapid expansion of solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear energy reduced the carbon intensity of electricity generation.
2. Structural Economic Shift: Gradual movement towards services, digital economy, and knowledge sectors, which are less emission-intensive than heavy manufacturing.
3. Energy Efficiency Measures: Initiatives curtailed electricity demand growth in industry and households, such as:
   • Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme
   • UJALA LED programme

Relative Decoupling

These gains represent relative decoupling, where emissions grow more slowly than GDP, rather than absolute decoupling, where emissions decline in real terms.

Persistently High Absolute Emissions

Despite intensity reductions, India’s absolute emissions continue to rise.

• Territorial greenhouse gas emissions stood at approximately 2,959 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent in 2020 and have increased thereafter.
• India is now the third-largest emitter globally in absolute terms.

Sectoral Trends

• Cement and steel: Rising demand from infrastructure and urbanisation
• Transport: Growth in vehicle ownership and freight movement
• Power sector: Slower emissions growth, but coal remains dominant

This highlights a structural issue: intensity-based targets alone cannot ensure emission stabilisation, especially in a rapidly expanding economy.

Renewable Energy Expansion

India’s renewable energy expansion has been substantial:

• Non-fossil fuel capacity rose from ~30% (2015) to over 50% by mid-2025
• Solar energy:
  • Expanded from <3 GW (2014) to over 110 GW by 2025
  • Driven by falling tariffs, policy support, and domestic manufacturing

Structural Constraints:

• Wind power growth slowed due to:
  • Land acquisition challenges
  • Grid connectivity constraints
  • State-level regulatory uncertainty

Capacity-Generation Mismatch:

• Despite accounting for over half of installed capacity, non-fossil sources contribute only ~22% of total electricity generation.
• Coal dominance persists due to its ability to provide:
  • Baseload power
  • Grid stability

Storage Bottleneck:

• Battery energy storage capacity remains far below projected needs.
• Without large-scale storage and grid flexibility, renewables cannot displace coal at the required pace.

Forest Carbon Sink: Accounting vs Ecology

India appears close to meeting its forest-based carbon sink target on paper.

• Official estimates suggest only ~0.2 billion tonnes of additional sequestration is required by 2030.

Key Challenges:

1. Broad Definition of Forest Cover
   • Forest Survey of India includes:
     • Plantations
     • Monocultures
     • Tree cover outside natural forests
   • This inflates carbon stock figures without necessarily improving:
     • Biodiversity
     • Ecosystem resilience

2. Governance and Implementation Gaps: Significant funds under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act (CAMPA) remain underutilised in several States.
3. Climate Stress on Forests
   • Heat stress, water scarcity, and extreme events threaten:
     • Forest productivity
     • Carbon sequestration potential
   • Particularly acute in ecologically sensitive regions.

Future challenges

• Transitioning from intensity reduction to absolute emission control
• Managing coal dependence while ensuring energy security
• Scaling storage, grid modernisation, and demand-side flexibility
• Ensuring the ecological integrity of forest-based climate solutions
• Aligning climate action with industrial growth and employment needs

Way Forward

• Sector-Specific Emission Caps: Particularly for cement, steel, and transport
• Accelerated Energy Storage and Grid Reform: Battery storage, pumped hydro, and smart grids
• Industrial Decarbonisation
  • Green hydrogen
  • Carbon capture and utilisation
  • Material efficiency
• Quality-Focused Forest Policy: Shift from tree-count metrics to ecosystem-based carbon accounting
• Climate-Responsive Growth Strategy: Integrating climate risks into planning, finance, and infrastructure development

Conclusion

India’s climate journey reflects a credible effort within its developmental constraints, with early achievement of emissions intensity targets and rapid renewable capacity expansion.

However, the persistence of rising absolute emissions underscores the limits of relative metrics. The next phase of climate action must focus on deep structural decarbonisation, energy system transformation, and ecological integrity to align economic growth with global climate stabilisation goals.