So I’ve spent the last several months living and breathing the @IEA #India Energy Outlook. I was thinking about which figures I would jam into a nice thread that could aptly synthesise the 250 page report. But then I thought, nah, I’ll just use this one:

The nice thing about this chart: it tells you a lot about the sustainability challenges facing #India. It splits sources of emissions by stuff existing today (cars, power plants, buildings, etc) and stuff that doesn't. e.g. 45% of today's emissions come from coal power plants

In fact, if operated as planned, India’s #coalpower emits well over 1 gigatonne of CO2 each year, every year, through to 2040. Currently, that’s the fifth largest category of #CO2emissions worldwide.

But take a closer look: even though electricity demand grows by 150% by 2040, total power sector emissions barely grow at all. This is because India is projected to add almost 700 GW of #solarPV to its power system. #Renewables have growth covered.

But what about the rest? All the new cars, factories, buildings? It’s hard to go low-carbon when you’re adding almost 300 million people to the urban population over the next 20 years. A lot of steel and cement is needed to build cities, roads and industries

By 2040, nearly 60% of emissions come from stuff that hasn’t been built yet. These ‘new’ emissions reflect a tried-and-tested development model, one that has made many countries very prosperous in the past. India is so far responsible for only 3% of global emissions since 1850.

So the challenge for India is to pioneer a low-carbon, inclusive development model. Sound hard? It is. Extremely. What will it take? Smart urban planning, robust efficiency rules, support for renewables, batteries, CCUS, hydrogen, bioenergy...

The dividends are better air quality, green jobs, lower fossil fuel import bills, to name a few. To find out more, read our new report on India. http://iea.li/36Wou6B  Kudos to @tgouldao, @siddharth3 our man in Delhi, and the whole #WEO team and others for the brilliant effort!