India's pollution soars as does fossil fuel use, climate fight gets tougher

The Global Carbon Budget 2024 study says fossil-related carbon dioxide emission in India is projected to rise by 4.6 per cent this year in line with rapid economic growth

Even as the talk of the undying smog in northern India finds reverberations in the vast, cold corridors of the Olympic stadium in Baku, a major fossil-fuel producer and host of the 29th edition of the annual United Nations climate-change summit, two critical reports, released on the sidelines of COP 29, reflect India’s growth conundrum. The first was new data from the 2024 Global Carbon Budget project, a peer-reviewed collaboration of more than 100 experts led by Pierre Friedlingstein, at the University of Exeter, UK, released on November 13, showing India to be the fastest-growing emitter of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels; the second, a report by the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), released on the same day, noted India’s elevation as the leading source of growth in global oil consumption.

  What is unclear is the cause of this.

  But the fresh data puts further pressure on New Delhi to clean up its air even as Indian negotiators have huddled in the chilly environs of Baku to stave off pressure from wealthy, Western nations pointing fingers at developing countries for increasing emission and burning more oil and coal. Developing nations, led by India, are trying to secure $1.3 trillion in transfer from rich nations to the developing world as reparations for historical pollution while trying to preserve the carbon budget to grow their economies.

  The Global Carbon Budget 2024 study says fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide emission in India is projected to rise by 4.6 per cent this year in line with rapid economic growth, citing that most of the new electricity demand is being met from the existing coal-fired power plants, with a smaller share by new renewables. This is the highest rate of growth among major world powers, with India’s emission growing at 22 times that of China. However, India accounts for only 8 per cent of global emission as against 32 per cent for China, whose emission may rise by only 0.2 per cent. 

The share of coal-fired generation in China has dropped by over 10 percentage points this year to a little over 50 per cent from a year earlier as the country added over 200 gigawatts (Gw) of renewables to its electricity system, according to reports by Scandinavian think tank CREA. But India has seen relatively muted success, adding less than 15 Gw of renewables last year, while switching to coal-fired development to meet record power demand. 

 

There was a decline in emission by the United States, which accounts for 13 per cent of the world’s total, by 0.6 per cent. The European Union, which has sharply increased the share of renewables in power generation after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, will see emission fall by 3.8 per cent in the year — it accounts for only 7 per cent of the world’s total. The rest of the world (38 per cent of the total) will increase emission by 1.1 per cent this year. 

Separately, India has emerged as the leading source of growth in global oil consumption, the EIA said. Over 2024 and 2025, India accounts for 25 per cent of total oil consumption growth globally, with the global consumption of liquid fuels increasing by 1 million barrels per day (bpd) this year and by 1.2 million bpd in 2025. Indian officials in Baku said India had low per capita emission compared to Western nations, and even in absolute terms, well below that of China and the US. Moreover, India needs cheap, affordable electricity and fuels to meet the demands of a young, growing population, they added. 

They admitted to intense pressure from Global North to shut down polluting coal-fired facilities and switch to less polluting but more expensive power generation alternatives. Participants at COP29 said Global North used half the world’s carbon budget to turn wealthy and now want to impose high-cost development policies, fuelled by Western funds and clean techno–logies, for India and other Asian nations. 

“Climate action is a collective problem, and while gradual emission reductions are occurring in some countries, increases continue in others,’’ the report said. 

Global carbon dioxide emission from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas grew by 0.8 per cent to 37.4 billion tonnes from 2023. After including emission from land-use change (such as deforestation) of 4.2 billion tonnes, carbon dioxide emission is projected to be 41.6 billion tonnes this year, up from 40.6 billion tonnes last year, according to the report.

“The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,” said Friedlingstein. 

The Global Carbon Project, which has published the state of global carbon cycle annually since 2007, said: “Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goals – and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels.”