What is India's pathway to limit global warming to 1.5°C?

Reducing emissions in line with 1.5°C requires structural shifts in energy use and production processes. Coal use in industry falls rapidly, from 33% of final energy in 2023 to below 1% by 2040 and is fully phased out by 2050. Electrification expands steadily, reaching 45% by 2040 and 55% by 2050, maintaining similar levels until 2070. However, total industrial energy demand grows over this period, which is consistent with industrial output expansion, underscoring the importance of accelerating energy efficiency and circularity in this sector.

Process emissions remain a key residual challenge even as energy decarbonises. They increase to 377 MtCO₂e by 2030 and decline only to 226 MtCO₂e by 2050, making them the dominant remaining source of industrial emissions. Addressing these emissions will require material efficiency, clinker substitution in cement, low-emissions steel routes, and targeted deployment of capture technologies.

Green hydrogen plays a central enabling role as a replacement feedstock in ammonia and refining, a reducing agent in steel production, and a high-temperature energy source where electrification is limited. A switch for the conventional business-as-usual (BAU) grey ammonia pathway to a real zero pathway that uses renewable electricity to produce green ammonia is crucial. States with high renewable energy production capacity, such as Rajasthan and Gujarat would be able to produce green ammonia on pay parity levelised cost of ammonia (LCOA) with BAU ammonia.

India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission, targeting production of at least 5 Mt per year by 2030, provides an early policy foundation, alongside broader efforts to accelerate electrification, phase out coal, and support low-emissions industrial production.