India, the world’s third-largest emitter, is working on a new climate plan that sees emissions peaking in 2045, ten years earlier than its current trajectory. There’s a catch, though — it needs $21 trillion.

Today’s newsletter brings you exclusive details from India’s draft plan, including how the country plans to fulfill its climate goals while lifting its population out of poverty. 

Plus, read about the two-year investigation into a forest project backed by companies like Volkswagen, Gucci and Nestlé. Two-thirds of the climate benefits it claimed were found to be fictitious. 

In the US, the Trump administration is trying to unwind a measure signed during his first term that would result in companies selling polluting air conditioners for longer.  

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India’s $21 trillion climate plan

By Lou Del Bello and Akshat Rathi

India is putting together a $21 trillion plan to simultaneously achieve its climate goals and lift its population out of poverty, according to a draft of the government document seen by Bloomberg.

The estimate offers a first glimpse of how the country intends to live up to its target of net zero emissions by 2070. The updated scenario implies hitting peak emissions in 2045, which is a decade earlier than the current trajectory.

A senior official with Niti Aayog, the government’s top think tank which drafted the plan, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A woman commutes in heavily polluted New Delhi Photographer: Prakash Singh/Bloomberg

India is already being severely battered by the fallout of climate change, as deadly floods and heat waves become more destructive each year. Severe pollution in major cities impacts the health of its citizens. But the need to mitigate the emissions that feed climate change has historically been at odds with India’s priorities of economic growth and energy security, with the latter still mostly provided through coal.

The new plan shows India will seek to achieve climate and economic development goals simultaneously, with low-carbon options envisaged for much of its yet-to-be-built residential and industrial infrastructure.

By 2070, the floor space of India’s buildings will have more than doubled, and its roads will need to support up to 190 cars per 1,000 people compared with 32 today. At the same time, energy supply will grow from 870 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) in 2020 to 2250 mtoe in 2070 under a net zero scenario.

The government now sees renewables supplying 65% of its total energy mix by 2070, with nuclear accounting for 11%. Coal would provide just 4%, down from 49% in 2020. If the country stays on its current trajectory, coal’s share would still make up close to 30% of the overall mix, while renewables would account for roughly a third in 2070.

Much of the planned progress in decarbonizing India’s economy relies on technologies that are still under development, and whose viability in India remains uncertain. Nuclear installations, for example, will need to reach as much as 300 gigawatts, compared with less than 9 gigawatts today. The draft plan also assumes a widespread industrial use of carbon capture technology, something that is yet to be tested in the country and has had limited success globally.

All countries are expected to submit climate plans stretching into 2035 at the United Nations climate summit, COP30, due to start in Brazil next month. China has said it expects to reduce emissions by as much as 10% from its peak by 2035. India has yet to submit its own plans to the UN.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com and subscribe for unlimited access to climate news.

Moving away from coal

A different view

Faulty offsets

By Ben Elgin

After a two-year probe, the world’s largest certifier of carbon offsets has determined that most of the credits from a massive forest-protection project in Zimbabwe, which powered green claims of Volkswagen, Gucci, Nestle and McKinsey & Co., failed to benefit the atmosphere.

It’s a sharp blow to carbon markets, which have shrunk by more than two-thirds since 2021, amid ongoing concerns about the quality of carbon projects and a broader corporate pullback in climate action.

“This is a big deal,” said Grayson Badgley, a research scientist at Carbon Plan, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions. “I haven’t seen an investigation like this before.”

Conservationists inspect a community water tank in Binga, Zimbabwe. Photographer: Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images

The probe by Verra, a nonprofit registry that issues more than half of the market’s carbon credits, focused on Kariba, a project that aimed to protect a forest the size of Puerto Rico from annihilation. Over the past decade, Kariba became the third-most widely used carbon project on the market, with companies relying on it to claim nearly 22 million tons of emission reductions – equivalent to half the annual climate footprint of Switzerland.

Read the full story, including how buyers are responding. For more news on carbon markets, please subscribe.

By Emma Court and Olivia Rudgard

President Donald Trump signed a landmark law to phase down potent greenhouse gases used in air conditioning during his first term. Now, his administration wants to unwind the measure, meaning companies could keep selling the polluting ACs for longer.

The Environmental Protection Agency said the proposed change is in response to a shortage of climate-friendly refrigerants needed to comply with the law, which raised prices for the products for contractors by as much as five times and left some Americans without AC at the height of summer. The agency is holding a public hearing on today before finalizing the rule change, and a spokesperson confirmed the hearing would continue despite the government shutdown.

If adopted, the new EPA plan would put the US further behind other countries in phasing out chemicals that can warm the planet thousands of times more than carbon dioxide. It would also throw a wrench into a transition to new, less-polluting chemicals and equipment that’s been years in the making. In addition to eliminating a January cutoff for installations of the older ACs, the EPA aims to push back deadlines to introduce greener chemicals in commercial spaces like cold storage in stores and factories by as much as six years.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com

A crude oil tanker  Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Those predicting that countries would adopt the first-ever global carbon tax on emissions in a landmark vote at the UN’s International Maritime Organization last week failed to fully account for President Donald Trump’s harnessing the might of the US against it. 

On Friday, nations voted to delay by one year the decision that would force large vessels to curb emissions or potentially incur fees of $380 per ton. The outcome was in part the culmination of a months-long campaign by US officials — including diplomats and cabinet members as well as the president himself — to fight the fee they decried as an untenable global carbon tax.

The US wasn’t alone in battling the initiative; nations including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia had voted against the planned emissions charge in April and on Friday backed the delay.

Read the behind-the-scenes account of how the US worked to postpone the landmark vote.

The EU will propose stronger measures to curb emissions costs in a new and controversial carbon market to address concerns that consumers will struggle to afford to heat their homes and fill up cars.

A group of firms including BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Exxon Mobil and Banco Santander have joined forces to push for a new way to measure the carbon emissions of the products they make, buy and finance.

A wind turbine in China Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

There’s always big ideas in the climate technology space, but it can be hard to get your head around all the different types of technologies making waves. What’s real and what’s low-carbon smoke and mirrors? This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi teams up with venture capitalist and Catalyst podcast host Shayle Kann to talk about which climate technologies are working, and which are going nowhere.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

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