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Dear readers,
Welcome to the Climate Weekly Digest by the Centre for Science and Environment’s Climate Change programme and Down to Earth.
China is preparing to unveil its 15th Five-Year Plan, a blueprint for the country’s economic and industrial development, and has already released a draft version of the plan. CSE Climate’s Rudrath Avinashi and Sehr Raheja analyse the draft plan of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter and the leading manufacturer of clean energy technologies. The plan raises China’s non-fossil energy share from 20 percent (set during the 14th Five-Year Plan) to 25 per cent of total energy consumption. It further seeks to expand “new energy” industries including solar photovoltaics, electric vehicles, batteries, green hydrogen and nuclear fusion. By 2025, clean energy activities accounted for 11 per cent of China’s GDP.
Avinashi and Raheja also highlight how Beijing is seeking to strengthen its dominance in critical minerals which are essential for the clean energy transition, with the aim of enhancing self-sufficiency and control of industrial chains. However, the plan also reflects concerns around energy security and frames coal as fundamental to the energy system’s reliability. As a result, rather than a phase-out, coal plants will remain in use through retrofits and flexible operations, even as China’s emissions are expected to peak before 2030.
In emissions-related updates, new data from Climate TRACE has shown that India recorded the largest drop in greenhouse gas emissions among major countries in 2025, even as global emissions rose in several key sectors. Down to Earth’s Puja Das writes that among the ten major emitting sectors globally, emissions rose in fossil fuel operations, transportation, manufacturing and buildings. However, the power sector, which is the largest source of global emissions (about 26 per cent), recorded a slight decline of 0.13 per cent in 2025. India and China drove much of these reductions, as power sector emissions fell by 2.6 per cent in India and 0.4 per cent in China. This indicates that the increased uptake of clean energy solutions is beginning to offset emissions—even as electricity consumption expands in the two fastest-growing energy markets.
Lastly, the next episode of Carbon Politics is set to be released on Saturday, March 28. In this episode, titled “The Sovereign Debt Crisis: A Hindrance to Climate Action”, I speak to Marina Zucker-Marques, a Senior Academic Researcher at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, about how sovereign debt impedes climate action and the avenues for debt relief for the Global South.
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By - Upamanyu Das
Climate Change, CSE
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For the first time in five years, Himachal Pradesh records severe heatwave in the first week of March, 11 March 2026
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February 2026 fifth warmest on record globally: Copernicus, 10 March 2026
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CLIMATE NEWS | SCIENCE| IMPACTS| POLITICS |
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Carbon Politics: A Video Podcast by CSE |
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