Have India’s Paris Climate Promises Been Delivered? A Decade After the Pledge

More than a decade after India stood at the Paris climate summit and outlined a carefully calibrated set of climate commitments, the question today is not whether targets were announced, but whether they have meaningfully reshaped India’s environmental trajectory. From the recent Supreme Court judgment on the Aravallis to the country’s expanding renewable energy footprint, India’s climate record reveals a mix of headline achievements and structural contradictions.

What India Promised at Paris — and Why It Mattered

At the 2015 Paris summit under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, India anchored its climate stance in the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, arguing that its development needs could not be judged by the same yardstick as historically high emitters like the United States.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated four quantified commitments: reducing emissions intensity of GDP by 33–35% from 2005 levels by 2030; raising non-fossil power capacity to 40%; achieving 175 GW of renewable energy; and creating an additional forest carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. These promises sought to balance climate action with economic growth.

Emissions Intensity: A Target Met, but With Caveats

On paper, India has delivered on its centrepiece pledge. By 2020, emissions intensity had fallen by roughly 36% compared to the 2005 baseline — reaching the Paris target a full decade early. This outcome reflects what economists call “partial decoupling”: GDP growth outpaced emissions growth, allowing emissions per unit of output to decline.

Three forces drove this shift. First, non-fossil power capacity expanded rapidly, lowering the carbon intensity of electricity. Second, India’s economy tilted towards services and digital sectors, which are less carbon-intensive than heavy manufacturing. Third, efficiency programmes such as Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) and UJALA moderated energy demand in industry and households.

Yet this success masks a deeper problem. Absolute emissions remain high. India’s territorial greenhouse gas emissions stood at around 2,959 MtCO₂e in 2020 and have not meaningfully declined since. Sectors such as cement, steel and transport continue to add emissions even as the power sector’s growth rate has moderated. For India’s 2070 net-zero pledge to be credible, intensity gains will need to translate into absolute emissions moderation — especially through coal transition strategies.

Renewable Capacity vs Renewable Generation: The Hidden Gap

India’s renewable energy expansion is undeniably dramatic. Non-fossil capacity rose from about 30% in 2015 to over 51% by June 2025. Solar capacity alone jumped from under 3 GW in 2014 to more than 110 GW by mid-2025, supported by competitive tariffs and domestic manufacturing.

But capacity is not the same as electricity generation. Despite accounting for over half of installed capacity, renewables supplied only about 22% of electricity in 2024–25. Coal, with roughly 240–253 GW of capacity, continues to provide over 70% of power because it delivers stable baseload electricity. Intermittency and weak storage infrastructure mean that renewable energy has not displaced coal at scale.

The storage gap is stark. The Central Electricity Authority projects a need for 336 GWh of energy storage by 2029–30, yet operational battery storage remains around 500 MWh. Without accelerated investment in storage and transmission, the ambition of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 risks remaining a statistical achievement rather than a climate solution.

Forests as Carbon Sinks: Numbers Without Ecology?

India is also on track, numerically, to meet its forest carbon sink target. Official estimates suggest that total forest carbon stock has risen by over 2.29 billion tonnes since 2005, leaving only a small gap to the 2030 goal.

However, the definition of “forest cover” complicates this claim. The Forest Survey of India counts any land over one hectare with 10% canopy cover — including monoculture plantations, orchards and roadside trees — as forest. This approach conflates ecological restoration with administrative classification.

Policy bottlenecks reinforce this concern. Under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, nearly ₹95,000 crore has accumulated, but utilisation remains uneven across states. The revised Green India Mission, launched in 2025, proposes large-scale regeneration in the Aravallis, Western Ghats and Himalayas, yet continues to equate plantations with natural forests. Climate stress, including warming and water scarcity, further undermines the long-term carbon absorption capacity of these ecosystems.

The Aravalli Judgment and the Limits of Regulatory Protection

These tensions are echoed in the recent Supreme Court ruling redefining the Aravallis for mining regulation, which has triggered fears of ecological dilution across the green belt. By narrowing legal definitions, the judgment underscores how environmental governance in India often prioritises administrative clarity over ecological function — a pattern also visible in forest accounting and land-use regulation. The Aravalli case illustrates how climate commitments can be undermined on the ground if regulatory protection for sensitive landscapes weakens.

What the Next Decade Will Test

India’s Paris commitments have largely been met in form, but not fully in substance. Emissions intensity has fallen, renewable capacity has surged, and forest carbon numbers look reassuring. Yet absolute emissions continue to rise, coal remains the backbone of power generation, and ecological outcomes lag behind accounting metrics.

The next five years will be decisive. Translating installed renewable capacity into sustained generation will require rapid scaling of storage, grid upgrades and land-use coordination. Intensity gains must evolve into absolute emissions moderation through credible coal phase-down pathways and industrial decarbonisation. Forest governance will need to move beyond plantation-driven targets towards biodiversity-rich restoration.

India’s climate story, a decade after Paris, is therefore less about broken promises than about unfinished transitions — where success on paper must now be converted into outcomes that genuinely alter the country’s environmental future.