India's Coal Power Falls for First Time in 52 Years as Renewables Outspend Fossil Fuels

India's Coal Power Falls for First Time in 52 Years as Renewables Outspend Fossil Fuels India's coal generation dropped 3.0% in 2025, its first annual decline in half a century, as a record clean-energy build-out and a new manufacturing push reshape its power mix. India's coal-fired power generation fell 3.0% in 2025, a drop of 46 terawatt-hours and the first annual decline in half a century, according to analysis for Carbon Brief published on 2026-05-19. Chinese coal generation fell over the same year, the first simultaneous retreat across the two countries in 52 years.³ For traders pricing the long arc of coal demand, that is a meaningful break. India has been treated as the last dependable engine of global coal-demand growth, the swing buyer that would keep thermal volumes rising even as richer economies pulled back. A decline there, alongside China, removes the two largest sources of expected coal growth at once. The fall did not come from weaker consumption. It followed record additions of clean generation in both countries.³ The shift sits inside a wider rotation of capital. Global investment in renewable energy is projected to reach $2.2 trillion this year, more than double the amount flowing into fossil fuels and over 40% of the $3.3 trillion the IEA estimates for the entire energy sector. On that math, renewables now command the largest single slice of global energy spending.² Demand is not the constraint. The IEA projects that AI and data centres alone could account for as much as 4% of global electricity use by 2030, accelerating the urgency for grid modernisation and new capacity rather than easing it. Forbes framed the same data around looming grid bottlenecks, the practical limit on how fast that capital turns into delivered power.² India's commitment runs deeper than power stations, into the hardware of the transition itself. Rystad Energy forecasts the country will be producing more than 8GW of electrolysers a year, roughly half the planned output of Europe, the current world leader in that equipment. Closing that gap would put India among the largest suppliers of the kit that turns cheap power into hydrogen.¹ The manufacturing pipeline is taking concrete shape. A joint venture with Greenko aims to make 2GW of electrolysers a year. Ohmium, an American startup, built its only factory in India and hopes to reach 2GW of annual output by the end of the year, and it has already dispatched the first Indian-made electrolysers to America. India is beginning to export that equipment rather than only import it, a shift supply-chain desks will note.¹ The next test is whether India's manufacturing ramp and clean-energy build-out keep outpacing a power demand that the IEA expects data centres worldwide to push higher. The 2025 coal decline sets the direction. Sustaining it through rising consumption is the harder part.^1,2³