India’s emissions are projected to rise 4.4% this year even as global fossil-fuel emissions decline by 0.4%, according to research by the Global Carbon Project. The contrast captures a central challenge for India’s cities: renewable energy, electric vehicles and other clean technologies are expanding, but not yet quickly enough to offset growth in energy demand and fossil-fuel use.
The study places India’s projected increase above its average annual emissions growth of 3.5% over the last decade. At the same time, fossil emissions are expected to fall in China, the United States, the European Union and Japan. The difference is not simply a comparison between countries. It reflects the uneven pace at which economies are changing their power systems, transport fleets and industrial energy use while continuing to grow.
For urban India, the issue is especially important because cities concentrate many of the activities driving energy demand. Electricity generation, construction, mobility, buildings, freight, industry and household consumption are closely linked to the emissions trajectory. A rise in national emissions therefore cannot be treated only as an energy-sector statistic. It also indicates that the systems supporting urban expansion remain substantially dependent on fossil fuels.
The Global Carbon Project’s findings also show why a single year of decline in global emissions needs to be interpreted carefully. Global fossil emissions are projected to fall partly because disruption in oil and gas supplies, linked in the report to the energy crisis triggered by the war in the Persian Gulf, has reduced the use of those fuels. Oil emissions are projected to decline by 1.9% and gas emissions by 0.3%. These reductions are partly offset by a 0.6% increase in coal emissions.
Pierre Friedlingstein, director of the Global Carbon Budget Office at the University of Exeter, said the decline driven partly by geopolitical shocks was not a sustainable climate solution. Glen Peters, research professor at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research, similarly said that a one-year fall in emissions does not represent a peak unless it is driven by structural change.
That distinction matters for cities because temporary supply disruption and durable transition produce very different outcomes. A short-term reduction caused by fuel shortages or price pressures can reverse when supply conditions change. A structural reduction requires sustained changes in electricity generation, vehicle technology, building energy use, industrial processes and the way urban infrastructure is planned and operated. The study indicates that the latter transition is progressing, but remains incomplete.
The strongest evidence of clean technology’s expanding role comes from solar and wind power. Emissions avoided by these sources rose from 0.28 billion tonnes in 2010 to 4.1 billion tonnes in 2025 and are projected to reach 4.6 billion tonnes in 2026. Electric vehicles are also reducing fossil-fuel use, but the effect remains limited because vehicle fleets take time to be replaced. Only about 10% of the global car fleet was electrified in 2025, according to the report.
This lag between new technology sales and the composition of the existing urban system is significant. A city can add electric vehicles without immediately changing the emissions profile of all transport. Older petrol and diesel vehicles remain in use, charging systems need to expand, and electricity used for charging must itself become cleaner for the full emissions benefit to materialise. The same principle applies to buildings and industry: new efficient assets do not rapidly replace the wider stock of older, energy-intensive infrastructure.
The report’s country comparisons provide a measure of the scale of the transition challenge. China’s emissions are projected to decrease by 0.9% in 2026 after two years of low emissions growth. Its renewable electricity generation is continuing to expand, offsetting a projected 0.3% increase in coal emissions. China accounts for 32% of global fossil emissions and, according to the study, half of the global emissions avoided through renewable energy and electric vehicles are located there.
Emissions are projected to fall by 1.3% in the United States, 1.5% in the European Union and 1% in Japan. These reductions do not mean that all of these economies have completed their transition, nor do they remove the importance of their historical emissions. They do show, however, that clean-technology deployment and changes in fuel use can begin to produce measurable reductions at national scale.
India’s projected increase highlights a different phase of development. The country is still expanding its infrastructure, urban settlements, mobility networks and energy consumption. That growth creates a larger base of demand that must be supplied while the energy system is being decarbonised. The study does not establish which specific Indian sectors account for the projected increase, but its overall finding points to a continuing gap between the expansion of clean technologies and the growth of total energy use.
That gap has direct implications for urban planning. Renewable capacity additions can reduce the carbon intensity of electricity, but they do not by themselves determine how quickly cities consume energy or how much infrastructure is built to support car-dependent travel, dispersed development and rising cooling demand. Electric vehicles can reduce tailpipe emissions, but their effect depends on fleet turnover, charging access and the electricity mix. These are connected planning and governance questions rather than isolated technology choices.
The study’s evidence also places the emissions discussion within a shrinking carbon budget. The remaining budget before warming reaches 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is now estimated at 150 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to less than four years of emissions at the current rate. The figure does not provide a city-level allocation, but it shows why the timing of reductions matters. Delayed structural change leaves less room for future emissions while urban infrastructure continues to be built and renewed.
The institutional challenge is therefore to align energy, transport, buildings and land-use decisions. The report attributes falling emissions in several countries to accelerated deployment of solar, wind, batteries and electric vehicles, while also noting that the changes are not yet sufficient to lock in a global peak. For urban administrations, this means that climate outcomes depend on decisions made across multiple agencies and levels of government. Power procurement, public transport, vehicle regulation, building standards, waste systems and infrastructure investment can affect the same emissions trajectory.
The supplied study does not provide a detailed account of India’s policy measures, state-level performance or city-level emissions. It therefore cannot establish whether particular Indian programmes are succeeding or failing. It does establish a national signal: despite growth in renewables and electric-vehicle adoption, India’s fossil emissions are expected to increase faster than their average annual rate over the last decade.
That signal should be read alongside the global data rather than against it. Clean technologies are making a measurable difference, with avoided emissions from solar and wind rising sharply since 2010. Countries on every continent are reducing emissions or slowing their growth while expanding their economies, according to the report. But the same evidence shows that technology growth has not yet produced a durable global decline, and that India remains on an upward emissions path in the projection for 2026.
The larger urban question is whether new infrastructure can lock in lower emissions faster than demand expands. India’s cities will need more housing, transport capacity, electricity and services, but the study indicates that the current transition is not yet keeping pace with that expansion. The answer will depend not only on how much renewable capacity or how many electric vehicles are added, but also on how quickly existing systems are replaced and how future urban growth is designed.
The Global Carbon Project’s central message is consequently two-sided. Clean technologies are already reducing emissions at a significant and growing scale, but a short-term global decline can be distorted by geopolitical disruption, while the pace of deployment remains insufficient for a sustained peak. India’s projected 4.4% increase makes that limitation visible in one of the world’s fastest-changing urban and energy systems. The developments that warrant monitoring are the durability of global reductions, the pace of India’s clean-energy deployment and whether the country’s expanding urban infrastructure begins to reduce, rather than add to, fossil-fuel demand.
