Green energy can’t yet bend climate curve
Last year, renewable energy installations scaled a landmark, globally. Solar, wind and hydro edged out fossil fuels as the predominant source of power. The world’s two most populous countries, India and China, led the charge in adding clean energy installations. Yet, human activities pushed global warming to 1.37 degrees Celsius in 2025, according to the latest Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) report, published on Wednesday in the journal Earth System Science Data. That the increase in warming comes at a time when the appetite for clean energy is at record levels frames the scale of the challenge for policymakers the world over. The expansion in renewables, though significant, is still not enough to check the rise in GHG emissions. Unlike the power sector and, to an extent, the transport sector, large sections of the industry continue to be driven by fossil fuels. Transitioning to cleaner alternatives – green hydrogen, for instance – takes time and requires investments. In the short run, national policies can help by nudging manufacturers towards adopting energy-efficient machines, using recyclable materials, and minimising waste. Recycled aluminium, for instance, requires much less energy than new aluminium. However, sustainable equipment often has high upfront costs. Integrating green technologies with traditional systems requires research and development. All this can be contingent on cooperation between academia and governments, and among governments. Unfortunately, know-how transfer has been the Achilles Heel of global warming mitigation. At the current emission rate, the carbon budget —the GHG that can still be emitted if global warming can be kept below the Paris Climate Pact’s threshold of 1.5°C— could be completely depleted in about three years, according to the IGCC report. The report comes at a time when national representatives have assembled at Bonn for mid-year climate talks. With the heatwave sweeping Europe and several other parts of the world, the report’s warnings should resonate among the participants.
- 1India's climate response is steered domestically through the National Action Plan on Climate Change, launched in 2008 with eight national missions covering solar power, energy efficiency and sustainable habitats. At the Glasgow COP26 summit in 2021, India pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2070 and committed to meeting half its energy needs from renewables by 2030. Such governance commitments shape how a country leading clean-energy additions, as the editorial notes, still struggles to bend the emissions curve.
- 2The Paris Agreement of 2015, adopted under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, binds nations to keep warming well below 2 degrees and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It rests on the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities, which assigns greater obligations to developed nations. The Bonn mid-year talks cited in the editorial are the technical sessions that prepare the ground for the annual Conference of the Parties summits.
- 3In India, the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2022 created the legal basis for a domestic carbon credit trading scheme and empowered the government to mandate the use of non-fossil energy sources. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the National Green Hydrogen Mission, approved in 2023, further frame the regulatory push toward cleaner industry. These instruments give statutory force to the energy-efficiency and green-hydrogen transitions the editorial urges.
- 4The IGCC report pegs human-induced warming at 1.37 degrees Celsius in 2025 and warns the 1.5-degree carbon budget could be depleted in roughly three years. Recycling aluminium uses about 95 percent less energy than producing it from raw bauxite, a striking efficiency gain the editorial highlights. India aims for 500 gigawatts of non-fossil power capacity by 2030, signalling the scale of investment needed to slow the rise in greenhouse-gas emissions.