India's Coal Power Stalls for Two Years as Renewables Absorb Demand Growth
Carbon Brief analysis shows India's coal generation flat since mid-2024, even as Coal Secretary Dutt projects domestic demand rising by a third before 2030.
India's coal-fired power output has shown no growth between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2026, the first such two-year stall in over 50 years, according to a Carbon Brief analysis published on Friday (2026-09-18). The pause follows a year in which coal generation actually fell — part of the first simultaneous decline in both India and China in half a century.6
The 2025 numbers tell a specific story. Coal generation in India dropped 3.0% year-on-year, a decline of 46 terawatt hours, while China shed 90 TWh, a 1.6% fall, Carbon Brief data show. Those two countries together drove 93% of the global rise in power-sector CO2 emissions between 2015 and 2024, so even a brief combined retreat carries outsized weight in near-term emissions accounting.2
Clean energy additions drove both declines. China added more than 300 gigawatts of solar and over 100 GW of wind in 2025, records for any country in a single year, Carbon Brief analysis shows. In India, renewable installed capacity reached 42.4% of the total power mix by March 2026, up from 0.72% in March 2005, while coal's installed share fell from 58.7% to 42.2% over the same period.2,3
Installed capacity and actual generation remain two different things. Despite holding over two-fifths of installed capacity, renewables delivered only 15.8% of India's electricity in April 2026, according to The Hindu. Coal accounted for 71.8% of generation that month, barely changed from 76.2% in March 2019. The capacity buildout has not displaced coal in the dispatch stack at anything close to the same pace.3
Industrial demand points in the opposite direction. India's Coal Secretary Vikram Dev Dutt said on Friday (2026-08-14) that domestic coal demand is set to climb from roughly 1.2 billion tons to 1.6 billion tons by 2030, driven by higher electricity generation and industrial activity. The government classified coking coal as a critical and strategic mineral in January 2026, with miners and steel producers reportedly planning new washeries to upgrade domestic output for blending into steel production.4,5
China's trajectory has already reversed. Coal power rose there for the fourth consecutive month in April 2026, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air data show, as weak wind output, below-average solar performance, and extended nuclear refuelling outages cut into low-carbon generation. Total power demand rose an estimated 6.6% year-on-year that month, faster than clean-energy sources could cover.1
Infrastructure signals the same direction. Thermal power commissioning in China surged by more than 160% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, a record high. Wind additions rose 8% in that period, while solar capacity additions fell 31% year-on-year against the elevated base set in the first quarter of 2025.1
Supply disruptions sharpened the picture. Shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz in April cut China's crude oil and natural gas imports by roughly 20%, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air data show, pushing coal back into the generation mix as the default source when import supply tightened.1
The coal equity ETF (COAL) settled at $25.00, down 3.1%, on September 20, even as Newcastle coal physical prices stood at $137.05 per tonne at Friday's close (2026-09-19). That equity move sits in tension with Coal Secretary Dutt's projection of Indian demand rising by a third before 2030, and with China commissioning thermal capacity at record quarterly rates.4,1
India's renewables held 42.4% of installed capacity in March 2026 but delivered 15.8% of generation in April. That gap has widened as the buildout accelerated. Until storage or grid infrastructure closes it, coal remains the marginal source even as installed capacity figures continue to shift toward clean energy — and China's record thermal commissioning pace in early 2026 suggests the global coal demand picture may diverge sharply from India's two-year plateau.3,6,1