Ensuring India's Energy Security and Negative Carbon Emissions

Abstract

India faces two challenges at the same time: keeping the power flowing for one of the world's fastest-growing economies, and cutting its carbon emissions toward net-zero and, eventually, below zero. This paper argues that these goals do not pull against each other. A deliberate shift from coal to renewable energy, backed by grid-scale storage to make that clean power usable, and by a larger forest cover to absorb what emissions remain, can make India both more energy-secure and cleaner. Environment and economy need not be mutually exclusive.

An energy system still built on coal

India's biggest energy problem is concentration. The country generates most of its electricity from a single fuel: in 2022 to 23 about 73% of India's power generation came from coal, and the Central Electricity Authority expects that share to fall only to around 55% by 2030 (CEA, via Down To Earth, 2023). Leaning so heavily on one fossil fuel, much of it, along with oil and gas, imported, leaves India exposed to price shocks and supply disruptions, and it does so while demand keeps climbing with a growing population and economy.

At the same time, India is not short of alternatives. About 5,000 trillion kWh of solar energy falls on the country's land area every year, and the National Institute of Solar Energy assesses India's practical solar potential at roughly 748 GW (NISE/MNRE, via ClearIAS). The resource is there; the task is to convert it into reliable supply.

Getting the carbon numbers right

The scale of India's emissions is often misstated, so it is worth being precise. India's emissions in 2019 worked out to roughly 1.9 to 2.0 tonnes of CO2 per person (WRI / Global Carbon Project, 2020), this is a per-person figure, not a national total. India's national emissions that year were about 2,597 million tonnes, or roughly 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2 (Climate Scorecard, 2020), and they have since climbed to 3.19 billion tonnes in 2024 (Global Carbon Project, via Our World in Data, 2024). That national total is the world's third-largest, after China and the United States (Carbon Brief, 2020).

Both facts are true at once, and both matter. Because India has more than 1.4 billion people, its emissions per person remain well below the world average, India has not caused the climate problem the way richer countries have. But its total is now large enough that the world's climate targets cannot be met without India, which is exactly why an affordable, secure clean-energy path is in India's own interest.

The real fix: build clean power faster, and store it

India already has a clear destination. At COP26 the country pledged to reach 500 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity by 2030 (NewsOnAir, 2025). Progress has been genuinely fast: by 30 June 2025, non-fossil sources made up about 50% of India's installed capacity, 243 GW out of 485 GW, a milestone reached five years ahead of schedule (NewsOnAir, 2025). By the end of 2025, non-fossil capacity had crossed 266.78 GW, with solar at 135.81 GW and wind at 54.51 GW (NewsOnAir, 2025); wind alone has grown from about 35.6 GW in 2021 to over 54 GW today.

But here is the catch that should shape policy. Installed capacity is not the same as electricity delivered. Even though non-fossil sources are now roughly half of installed capacity, coal still generates about three-quarters of the electricity India actually uses, because solar and wind only produce power when the sun shines and the wind blows. Adding more panels and turbines, on its own, does not switch coal plants off. To close that gap, India should concentrate on two mechanisms:

1. Make the clean power at home. The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for High-Efficiency Solar PV Modules commits ₹24,000 crore to build gigawatt-scale domestic manufacturing of solar cells and modules, so India stops importing most of its solar hardware and its clean-energy build-out is not hostage to another country's supply chain (MNRE, 2021). Energy security means not trading dependence on imported coal for dependence on imported panels.
2. Store the sunshine. Because renewables are intermittent, clean capacity only displaces coal if the power can be shifted to the evening and night when demand peaks. India's Viability Gap Funding scheme for Battery Energy Storage Systems commits ₹9,400 crore, including ₹3,760 crore of direct budget support, to build 4,000 MWh of storage by 2030 to 31, covering up to 40% of project cost (NewsOnAir, 2023). Storage is the missing link that turns a high renewable capacity into a genuinely lower-coal grid.

To actually reach 500 GW, India will need to roughly double its current pace of additions over the rest of the decade, which is why picking a small number of high-leverage mechanisms, and funding them properly, matters more than a long wish-list.

Keep the carbon sink growing

Cutting emissions is only half of "negative emissions"; the other half is absorbing carbon that is still released. India's forests are its main natural carbon sink, so protecting existing forest and expanding green cover, through afforestation and by halting deforestation, is the most direct route toward net-negative territory.

Bhutan shows what is possible. It is the world's only carbon-negative country: roughly 70% of its land is under forest, and a minimum of 60% forest cover is written into its constitution, so its forests absorb far more CO2 than the country emits (Earth.org, 2022). India cannot copy Bhutan's scale, it is far larger and more industrial, but the principle transfers: treat forest cover as national infrastructure, and measure it as seriously as we measure power capacity.

What India can learn from a coal-free path

On the supply side, Denmark shows that a near coal-free electricity system is achievable. Wind alone now supplies close to 60% of Danish electricity, the highest wind share of any country in the world (Our World in Data, 2023). Denmark's example is instructive not because India's geography is the same, but because it proves that a modern economy can run mostly on variable renewables once the grid, storage and market rules are built to support them, the same institutional work India is now beginning.

Conclusion

India's power demand will keep rising, and so, for a while, will its emissions. But that rise can be curbed with the right policies and, above all, their strict implementation, India is often good at making policy and weaker at executing it. The twin aim should be energy sufficiency together with efficiency, bringing emissions down to net-zero and then toward negative. The path is concrete, not utopian: shift generation from coal to renewables, fund the storage that lets clean power actually replace coal, manufacture the hardware at home, and grow the forest cover that absorbs what is left. Do those things, and India can be both more secure and cleaner, proof that environment and economy need not be mutually exclusive, and that with modern technology we can make real strides on both at once.

Sources

1. World Resources Institute (2020), "CO2 Emissions Climb to an All-Time High (Again) in 2019", wri.org
2. Climate Scorecard (2020), "India Has Seen Greenhouse Gas Emissions Increase by 335% Since 1990", climatescorecard.org
3. Our World in Data / Global Carbon Project, India CO2 country profile, ourworldindata.org
4. Carbon Brief, "The Carbon Brief Profile: India", carbonbrief.org
5. Down To Earth / Central Electricity Authority (2023), coal's share of India's power mix, downtoearth.org.in
6. NewsOnAir (2025), India achieves 50% non-fossil power capacity five years ahead of target, newsonair.gov.in
7. NewsOnAir (2025), India achieves 250 GW non-fossil capacity; 500 GW by 2030, newsonair.gov.in
8. NewsOnAir (2025), Non-fossil capacity rises to 266.78 GW; solar 135.81 GW, wind 54.51 GW, newsonair.gov.in
9. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, PLI scheme for High-Efficiency Solar PV Modules (₹24,000 crore), mnre.gov.in
10. NewsOnAir (2023), Viability Gap Funding scheme for Battery Energy Storage Systems (₹9,400 crore), newsonair.gov.in
11. ClearIAS / National Institute of Solar Energy, India's solar potential (~5,000 trillion kWh/yr; 748 GW), clearias.com
12. Our World in Data (2023), Denmark's wind share of electricity, ourworldindata.org
13. Earth.org (2022), "Bhutan: The First Carbon Negative Country in the World", earth.org