India’s new climate pledges under the Paris Agreement of 2015: Real progress or safe targets?

The successful negotiation of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was made possible by a key compromise on country-wise commitments. These would no longer be determined in a top-down manner based on what would be needed to cap global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at safe levels (the Kyoto protocol approach), but instead through a bottom-up approach by countries themselves in accordance with their national development priorities—or nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

This key difference recognized the diverse development status of countries, their need for economic growth and varied capacity to invest in a climate transition.At the same time, the pact recognized that a bottom-up approach could result in less-than-adequate climate commitments. It therefore laid down processes for a global stocktake every five years, with the expectation that countries would increase their ambition on climate action as technologies matured and they ascended their own learning curves.

So, how has India’s national status changed and where are we in terms of climate action drivers and opportunities? Around the time that the Paris Agreement was signed, India was the seventh-largest economy in the world. We are now about to become the fourth largest, with a robust GDP growth rate expected even in 2026-27.

While we have surpassed our non-fossil energy capacity commitment, the share of non-fossil energy in our total primary energy supply mix grew from 4.25% in 2014-15 to just 4.85% in 2023-24 (Niti Aayog data). This share may have grown since, but fossil energy remains the vast bulk.

In other words, we have not made any real difference towards a transition to clean energy. A narrow lens on electricity supply reveals that our share