India vital statistics

It was still only early April when farmhands and construction workers began to collapse from heat exhaustion in northern India, while daytime temperatures topped 40C (104F) in the capital, Delhi. Night-time record highs caused spikes in air conditioning use, overwhelming the electricity grid and causing protracted power outages as people struggled to keep cool.

The blazing heat had come earlier than usual. One big Delhi hospital opened up a specialist heat ward equipped with two large tubs filled with ice. Other medical facilities scrambled to buy ice packs as heat-related emergencies surged. Over the months to come, many Indians would wrestle with power cuts amid the back-to-back deadly heatwaves that are becoming more frequent, longer and brutal.

Access to reliable energy is still patchy, with daily outages and blackouts disrupting work, school and every aspect of home life for rural villages, low-income neighbourhoods – and even middle-class suburbs, where residents often rely on diesel-guzzling generators to keep their fridges cool and elevators running.

Two-thirds of Indian households experience some form of energy poverty, according to one study, a lack of safe, reliable and affordable energy for lighting, cooking, heating, and other daily activities fundamental for human health and economic prosperity. Now the demand for life-saving cooling among the growing minority lucky enough to afford it is adding further strain on India’s generation capacity and distribution infrastructure – and contributing to the 7% to 8% annual increase in electricity demand.

India needs to generate more electricity every year to cope. Tackling the energy access gap is a critical step in meeting the country’s economic and social development ambitions, and it has been a top priority for successive Indian governments. 

At the same time it is on the frontline of the global climate crisis, coping with worsening drought, floods, desertification, sea level rise, melting glaciers and extreme heat, which are exposing and exacerbating existing inequalities and development needs among its 1.45 billion people. 

And yet the country simultaneously faces criticism for not doing enough on climate mitigation from the international community, particularly the industrialised western countries historically most responsible for global heating.

India is in absolute terms the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter after China and the US, but the country rejects this measure as unfair. “This is not a valid metric, which is why India has argued for a long time about historic responsibility from the perspective of cumulative emissions and a fair share of the carbon budget,” said one person with knowledge of India’s climate negotiations.

“Of course a country the size of India cannot say that we will not do anything because we did not cause the problem, that would be borderline climate denial. We will contribute our fair share, but on the basis of equity and fairness. That’s absolutely how the negotiators come at it.”

Per capita emissions are less than half the global average, and while India’s per capita income or GDP is rising, it remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

Even before the 2015 Paris accords made it a legal obligation, India insisted that the historical polluters whose populations had benefited disproportionately from the planet’s carbon budget such as the US, UK, Germany and Canada must lead the way on phasing out fossil fuels and provide the means of implementation – finance, technology and capacity building – to poorer, developing countries. This principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) was first formalised in the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) at the 1992 Earth summit in Rio, and has been the bedrock for India’s negotiating position in international climate talks.

“Equity and CBDR has always been the foundational principle for India, and they have stood up to the bullying from the rich west that constantly paints them as the scapegoat,” said Meena Raman, a climate policy expert and Cop veteran from the Third World Network (TWN). “India’s per capita emissions are very low, and its development needs are very high – including huge energy challenges.”

This, she says, is why an Indian minister stood up and fought over the coal debate in Glasgow at Cop28 in 2023, when India and China were highly criticised by some representatives from the EU, US, UK and some island nations because they insisted on the phase-down rather than phase-out of coal in the final agreement. Coal is undoubtedly the dirtiest of fossil fuels, but India remains heavily reliant on its abundant domestic supply of coal for energy security and economic growth, accounting for about 70% of total electricity generation currently and half of its overall energy capacity.

For the Indian government the focus on coal is another example of the west’s hypocrisy. The UK, US, Germany and other formerly coal-centric nations switched to fracked gas only after exhausting cheap domestic supplies and exporting manufacturing to developing countries such as India and China. India on the other hand relies mostly on costly gas imports, making it unviable as an alternative to coal for reliable base-load capacity – the minimum continuous electricity a power grid needs to meet steady demand, which is particularly crucial for its industrial and economic growth, the Indian government says. 

But coal mining and production – like all industries in India – also contribute to an array of public health harms including air pollution. The development justification fails to take into account the devastating health toll associated with every stage of the fossil fuel cycle.

The seasonal heat misery is made worse by outdoor air pollution from heavy industry, fossil fuel power plants, burning crops, vehicle emissions and unpaved dusty roads – 13 of the most polluted cities in the world last year were in India. But research suggests that indoor air toxins from burning wood, animal dung, and crop waste for cooking cause more deaths and illness, as that is where people spend most time. Twenty-seven of every 1,000 babies and children die due to exposure to dirty cooking fuels in India, according to researchers at Cornell University.

“Based on health science alone, expanding fossil fuels goes against the human right to development because of the multigenerational harm caused to human health and food systems,” said Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change. “These impacts in and of themselves worsen climate impacts on human wellbeing and economies, on top of the direct harm to the climate system caused by fossil fuels.”

But India is not just depending on coal. It is also investing aggressively in nuclear, green hydrogen, hydro and renewables, particularly solar and wind. “India’s energy transition goals have always been an ‘all of the above’ approach, to increase capacity from fossil and non-fossil sources as part of its broader economic growth aspirations – and in response to growing demand,” said Ashwini Swain, an energy transition expert at the Delhi-based Sustainable Futures Collaborative. “So far the approach has mostly been ad hoc and supply-centric rather than targeted to end users, because it comes from a scarcity mindset. This has worked out so far, but India has reached a stage where we need a much more strategic whole systems approach to energy transition.”

In a recent speech to mark India’s 79th independence day, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, who no one would describe as an environmentalist, said energy independence was “essential” for achieving Viksit Bharat, the government’s goal to make India into a fully developed nation by 2047. He promised a tenfold expansion of nuclear energy capacity from 9 to 100 gigawatts capacity by 2047, which will mark 100 years of independence from British colonial rule, a target experts say is unrealistic given current infrastructure expansion.

The government recently announced major investments and incentives for public and private green hydrogen and ammonia projects, with a target of producing 5m metric tonnes by 2030. This would almost meet the current supply needs of the fertiliser industry and oil refineries, the largest end users that currently rely on grey (fossil gas) hydrogen, another example of a more targeted energy transition policy.

India is also expanding wind and solar at breakneck speed. Earlier this year it surpassed Japan to become the third largest solar energy producer and fourth in the world for wind, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Large-scale renewable energy projects (solar, wind and dams) are not subject to environmental impact reviews and have led to land and social conflicts. And while commercial solar installations still dominate, residential rooftop solar with battery storage is slowly growing thanks to subsidies and other government schemes. In July, the government announced that non-fossil fuel sources now make up half of India’s installed electricity capacity, five years ahead of its 2030 mitigation target set out in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outlined under the Paris agreement.

For now, however, India remains dependent on fossil fuels.The Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific project that monitors government actions against the Paris agreement’s 1.5C goal, rated India’s targets and policies – including the 50% non-fossil capacity target – as “highly insufficient”. The country’s progress report to the UNFCCC on its current NDC is expected before Cop30 in Belém, Brazil. The new NDC covering 2030 to 2035 has been submitted by the technical team and is now under review by ministers.

“The climate problem has to be embedded in development. You need reliable energy for building hospitals and mass transit, and we cannot ignore the immediate realities for people living without cooking fuels and lighting,” said a negotiations insider.

“Even if India shuts down all of its coal tomorrow, if the US keeps drilling and the EU keeps expanding their fossil fuels, we are going to face an increasing frequency of extreme events anyway. For us, the most urgent requirement then becomes adaptation. We have to invest in early warning systems and shelters to make sure that people are protected, especially vulnerable populations.”

What is at stake at Cop30 in Brazil?

India’s delegation to the UN climate talks is relatively small considering the country’s size, diversity and challenges, with only a dozen or so top-level negotiators. The negotiators are regularly replaced due to India’s bureaucratic system, a legacy of British rule, which means the delegation can lack negotiating capacity and institutional history. They rarely brief journalists or release statements during the annual climate talks, another symptom of the bureaucratic hierarchy and Modi’s hostility towards civil society and the media.

But the delegation includes experienced, skilled scientific and technical experts, and India is an active member of several negotiating coalitions including the G77 plus China bloc. It has a track record of pushing for unity among developing nations, which was key to securing the loss and damage fund in Egypt, according to Raman from the TWN.

India is also a big player in the increasingly influential like-minded developing countries bloc, coordinating finance for the 24-member coalition that includes Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Kuwait, Pakistan, China and Mali.

Modi appears likely to attend Cop30 in Belém this November after missing last year’s talks in Baku, not least because it will provide another stage to show Donald Trump, who recently slapped 50% trade tariffs on India and Brazil, that he has other friends and allies.

India will push to table a new agenda item to discuss the provision of climate finance, specifically article 9.1 of the Paris agreement, which says that developed countries shall provide climate finance for the poorest countries. In the new finance goal agreed in Baku last year, developed countries tried to shift focus away from provision to article 9.3, which is about mobilisation.

“While wealthy countries want to focus on mitigation and net zero targets, India and all the like-minded countries will keep pushing on climate finance as an obligation because this is not charity, it’s premised on this legal regime,” said Raman. “Fair finance for adaptation and loss and damage is so important particularly when the US plan is to ‘drill, baby, drill’ and pressure everybody else to also ‘drill, baby, drill’.”

India has received more than $1bn in UN funds for climate projects, but most mitigation and adaptation efforts are financed domestically.

India has submitted its national adaptation plan to the UNFCCC, and the negotiators will be pushing for progress on finalising concrete indicators for the global goal on adaptation that are both measurable and financed. 

Loss and damage is not just an issue of the small island states. India, which has about 1,000 islands, as well as deserts, glaciers, forests and coastlines, is also very vulnerable and is stepping up efforts to assess its own loss and damage.

Pledges to the historic fund have stalled at about $750m (£560m) since it was agreed in Dubai in 2023, which amounts to less than 0.2% of the irreversible losses developing countries are facing from global heating every year. And while no one is under any illusion that India will get money from the loss and damage fund, the government recoils at suggestions that it should be contributing to the pot, though it has channelled billions into climate finance through multi-development banks.

India will hold the line on finance at Cop30, but is also realistic, according to observers.

“India will keep the pressure on for finance for developing countries but they know they are not getting anything, so are buying time and just doing things on their own,” said Harjeet Singh, an Indian climate activist and strategic adviser to the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.

“Coal will be phased down and not out until there’s technology for heavy industries, but the transition is going to happen. India wants to become a green, clean country. There are typical developing country challenges, too much bureaucracy and lack of capacity. But the intent is there. The writing is on the wall.”