By Shayak Sengupta, Peter Adams, Thomas Deetjen, Puneet Kamboj, Swati D'Souza, Rahul Tongia, and Inês Azevedo
India is the third largest emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Coal-based power generation in the country is a large and growing source of these emissions and air pollution. Electricity generation and associated emissions vary by state in India due to differences in population, geography and economic development. This analysis quantifies these differences to find they are continental scale. Electricity consumption and emissions of states in India are similar to differences between those of entire countries. It also evaluates policies such as air pollution control, carbon taxes, and market reforms to find negligible national impacts can still have differing impacts by location. Future international climate policy must account for these subnational differences to accurately assess impacts.
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