India’s carbon emission rise slower this year, says report

India’s carbon emission rise slower this year, says report

In 2024, the country’s emissions grew by 4%, but a favourable monsoon, which cut demand for cooling, and a growth in renewable energy use, limited the rise to 1.4%, says Global Carbon Project.

India’s 2025 carbon emissions have increased slowly compared to last year. While global carbon emissions are expected to rise to 38 billion tonnes, or by 1.1%, this year, the growth in India’s emissions is expected to increase by 1.4%, according to the Global Carbon Project, an authoritative tracker of fossil fuel emissions. This is lower than in recent years — in 2024, India’s emissions grew 4% than the previous year.

The slower increase was partly due to a favourable monsoon that reduced cooling demand, as well as a “strong growth in renewable energy”, leading to lower coal use.

Global emission trends

China’s emissions in 2025 are projected to increase by 0.4% — also a slower growth than in recent years. This was due to a “moderate growth in energy consumption combined with an extraordinary growth in renewable energy.”

Emissions are projected to grow in the United States (+1.9%) and the European Union (0.4%) in 2025.

Overall, India is the third largest emitter of carbon at 3.2 billion tonnes annually (2024), led by the U.S. (4.9 billion tonnes) and China (12 billion tonnes). India’s per capita emission is 2.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the second lowest among 20 of the largest economies globally. Coal is the major fuel type contributing to India’s emissions.

The projected rise in global fossil CO2 emissions in 2025 is driven by all fuel types: coal +0.8%, oil +1%, natural gas +1.3%. Over the 2015-2024 period, emissions from permanent deforestation remained high around 4 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, while permanent removals through reafforestation and forest regrowth offsets about half of the permanent deforestation emissions.

Total CO2 emissions — the sum of fossil and land-use change emissions — have grown more slowly in the past decade (0.3% per year), compared to the previous decade (1.9% per year). The remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C is “virtually exhausted”.

The remaining budget for 1.5°C is 170 billion tonnes of CO2, equivalent to four years at the 2025 emissions levels.

“With CO2 emissions still increasing, keeping global warming below 1.5°C is no longer plausible,” said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study. “The remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C, 170 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, will be gone before 2030 at current emission rate. We estimate that climate change is now reducing the combined land and ocean sinks – a clear signal from Planet Earth that we need to dramatically reduce emissions.”

The latest numbers come even as world leaders are gathered in Belem, Brazil, to attempt progress in transitioning away from fossil fuel use while also negotiating how to pay for the costs of bolstering defence against the effects of human-caused climate change already underway.