How will India’s new Nationally Determined Contribution accelerate climate action?

The story so far:

On Wednesday (March 25, 2026), the Union Cabinet approved India’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). This includes committing to have 60% of its installed electric capacity from non-fossil sources by 2035, reducing by 47% the intensity of emissions per unit of GDP (from 2005 levels), and increasing its carbon sink to 3.5 billion-4 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. These targets will be communicated to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They arrive at a moment when a new analysis shows that India’s CO₂ emissions in 2025 grew at the slowest rate in more than two decades.

Are NDCs voluntary or mandatory?

Under the Paris Agreement, every signatory country must periodically submit NDCs, which are voluntary pledges spelling out how they will transition away from fossil fuels. India’s previous NDC, conveyed in August 2022, committed it to 50% non-fossil installed capacity by 2030, a 45% reduction in emissions intensity, and a carbon sink of at least 2.5 billion-3 billion tonnes of CO₂-equivalent.

The new targets raise each threshold. The 60% non-fossil capacity target is notable because India has already proven it can get there: as of early 2026, about 52% of installed capacity comes from non-fossil sources, a target met well ahead of the 2030 deadline. India and Argentina were the only G20 nations that had not announced a 2035 NDC by the end of 2025, so this announcement closes a conspicuous gap in the global ledger of climate pledges.

Have NDCs actually prodded countries towards clean energy?

This is the central question that hangs over every NDC cycle, and the evidence is decidedly mixed. The United Nations Environment Programme Emissions Gap Report 2025, titled ‘Off Target’, delivered a blunt verdict: nations have had three attempts to hit the mark with their NDCs since 2015, and each time they have landed off target. Projected warming fell from 2.6-2.8°C to 2.3-2.5°C, but methodological updates accounted for much of the improvement, and the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement cancels out another chunk. NDCs submitted so far close less than 14% of the emissions gap needed to reach 1.5°C, according to the World Resources Institute.

The details are more damning. E3G’s NDC Energy Commitments Tracker, which assessed 101 submissions by late 2025, found that while 94% of countries included some commitment to at least one energy transition goal, not one presented a comprehensive plan aligned with the COP28 energy package. This was an agreement, called the ‘UAE Consensus’, by nearly 200 countries in December 2023 to accelerate climate action by transitioning away from fossil fuels, tripling global renewable energy capacity, and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5°C. However, no country set a target for winding down oil and gas production. Nearly three-quarters did not mention fossil fuel subsidy reform. And most developing country NDCs depend on international finance, which is woefully short of the required scale.

The paradox, then, is this: the clean energy transition is accelerating anyway. Global solar and wind installations reached a record 814 GW in 2025. Renewables surpassed coal as the largest source of electricity globally in the first half of 2025. But this boom has been driven primarily by plummeting costs and industrial competition — particularly China’s dominance in manufacturing — rather than by NDC-driven policy mandates. The NDC process, in other words, has been better at documenting ongoing progress than at driving the structural changes needed to phase out fossil fuels.

What does India’s emissions data tell us?

A new analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), published by Carbon Brief, finds that India’s CO₂ emissions grew by just 0.7% in 2025, the slowest rate since 2001, excluding the Covid year of 2020. This is a dramatic deceleration from 4-11% growth in 2021-24. The power sector was the key driver: emissions fell 3.8%, after coal-fired generation declined for the first time outside of Covid since 1973. CREA underlines that India added 47 GW of solar, 6.3 GW of wind, 4 GW of hydro, and 0.6 GW of nuclear in 2025, or enough new clean generation to cover demand growth of up to 5%.

Not all sectors followed suit. Steel surged 8% and cement 10%, driving the small overall increase. The analysis suggests India’s power sector could reach an inflection point as early as 2026, where newly added clean generation matches annual demand growth. The Central Electricity Authority’s National Generation Adequacy Plan projects non-fossil sources reaching 786 GW — 70% of the total — by 2035-36, with solar alone crossing 500 GW. Sceptics note that 2025 had mild summers, minimal heatwaves, and weak industrial growth. This means this may be an aberration and a trend requires a few years to confirm.

What should we watch for?

India’s NDC uses emissions intensity — emissions per unit of GDP — as its yardstick. Absolute emissions can continue rising as long as the economy outpaces them. India has defended this on grounds of equity, and as a legitimate framework for a country whose per-capita emissions remain a fraction of those in the West.

But contradictions persist. India plans 100 GW of new coal-fired capacity over seven years, $1 trillion in petrochemical investment by 2040, and a 50% increase in coal-based steel capacity by 2031. Over 37 GW of renewable capacity remains stranded due to gaps in grid readiness, as Vibhuti Garg of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has pointed out. Carbon sinks, one of the least discussed aspects of NDCs, require maintaining forest cover. India is far from its 33% target, currently at about 24%, including trees outside forests that critics argue may be unreliable as carbon sinks.

Published – March 29, 2026 02:00 am IST