Record emissions drop in India

Higher renewable energy deployment has resulted in India recording the largest drop in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among major countries in 2025, even as global emissions rose in several key sectors, according to new data from Climate TRACE and as highlighted by a Down to Earth (DTE) report. India’s power sector emissions fell 2.6 per cent in 2025, marking the first decline since 2020. The drop came despite rising electricity demand and continued economic growth, suggesting that the rapid expansion of renewable energy is beginning to moderate emissions from electricity generation. Crucially, both of these declines come at a time of increased economic growth and electricity consumption, demonstrating that renewable deployment is beginning to make a dent in overall power sector emissions in these countries. Clean energy solutions are taking hold in many locations around the world, and as a result, emissions are beginning to decline in these regions, Climate TRACE data reveals.

As reported the Climate TRACE website, Climate TRACE Data show global greenhouse gas emissions hit a new record high in 2025. Key insights from 2025 emissions data reveal that despite a small decline in power sector emissions, fossil fuel operations, transportation, manufacturing, and buildings all nudged global greenhouse gas emissions higher. Oil and gas production was the subsector with the largest jump in emissions, increasing 4.1%.

The biggest movers in the power sector were China, India, and the US. For the first time since at least 2015, emissions from China's power sector decreased year over year, but that decline was offset by an equivalent increase in US power emissions. Meanwhile, India's power sector emissions fell for the first time since 2020. For nearly a decade, India and China led the world in rising power sector emissions. Between 2015 and 2024, emissions from China’s power sector increased 53.7 per cent, while India’s rose 34.6 per cent. But 2025 marked a shift. China’s power sector emissions declined 0.4 per cent, the first drop recorded by Climate TRACE since it began compiling its inventory in 2015, while India’s also registered a fall.

All 2025 emissions data released by Climate TRACE include monthly and annual totals for all major greenhouse gases and eight major non-GHG co-pollutants across 10 sectors, 64 subsectors, every country, state/province, county, more than 9000 cities, and more than 744 million individual assets. The analysis focuses on non-land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) emissions. The data also show that in nearly every month of 2025, global emissions were higher than they were in 2024.

In 2025, Climate TRACE analysis as mentioned in a news release on its website finds that Russia's emissions increased the most of any country in the world, while India had the largest drop in emissions. China and the United States, the world's top two emitters, saw their emissions stay relatively flat in 2025, ticking up slightly in each country. Despite the relatively small rate of increase, China and the US ranked second and sixth, respectively, for largest increase in absolute emissions.

The news release adds that across 10 major emitting sectors, the most significant growth in emissions in 2025 came from fossil fuel operations, with emissions rising 1.56% or 151.57 Mt CO2e. Emissions also rose in the transportation, manufacturing, and buildings sectors last year. The power sector continues to be the largest source of global emissions in 2025 (26% of total emissions). Climate TRACE data show that global power sector emissions fell slightly, decreasing by 0.13% or 20.31 Mt CO2e in 2025 – the first decline since the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the decline came from electricity generation in India and China, but Russia, Australia, and Poland also saw significant drops in their power sector emissions. Road transportation emissions increased globally but have dropped in Nordic countries where electric vehicle (EV) adoption is high. Globally, the current rate of growth in emissions is half of what it was throughout the rest of the decade, slowing from an average 1.1% increase each year between 2015 and 2023 to an average of 0.5% increase over the past two years. Excluding 2020, the past two years saw the slowest growth in emissions since 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement.