# How does India generate electricity? > Coal provided 71% of electricity in 2025, yet clean sources surpassed a quarter for the first time. **India's electricity still mostly coal, but clean power rises** In 2025, India generated 2,083 TWh of electricity. Coal did most of the heavy lifting at 1,474 TWh (70.8%). Clean sources, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind, and bioenergy, supplied 555 TWh (26.7%), a record share. Gas contributed just 2.3%. While coal remains the bedrock, the mix is shifting. Installed solar capacity has skyrocketed to 97 GW, and renewable share hit a modern high. However, surging demand means absolute coal generation still grows. The grid is getting marginally cleaner per unit, but total emissions rise. ## Where did India's electricity come from last year? In 2025, coal generators produced 1,474 terawatt-hours of electricity, or 70.8% of the total. That is nearly three-quarters of our power. Fossil fuels as a whole (coal plus a small amount of gas) accounted for 73.4% of generation. Clean sources, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind, and bioenergy, supplied 554.8 TWh, or 26.7% of the mix. Total electricity generation met demand of 2,082.82 TWh. A terawatt-hour is a billion kilowatt-hours, enough to power a medium-sized city for a year. This stacked bar shows the single year snapshot: coal dominates, but clean sources are no longer marginal. Hydro alone contributed 178 TWh, the largest clean component. Gas remained tiny at 49 TWh (2.3%). The chart answers the page question directly: India's electricity is still mostly coal. But the 2025 mix is more diverse than it used to be, even compared to a few years ago. Seasonal shifts, however, are not visible here; the monsoon bumps up hydro temporarily, but the annual picture hides that variability. ## How have coal, clean power and gas changed over time? While the snapshot tells you what happened last year, the trendline reveals the story. Over the past two decades, India's total electricity demand has ballooned, from 573 TWh in 2000 to over 2,082 TWh in 2025. Coal generation has grown to meet most of that demand, but clean power has also grown absolutely, even if its share remained modest. In 2025, clean sources generated 555 TWh, up from a much smaller base in 2000. Gas generation has stayed relatively small, hovering around 49 TWh. The chart groups many clean sources together: hydro, nuclear, solar, and wind. Separately, solar has been the fastest riser, but aggregated here, its acceleration is hidden. The key insight: coal has not been displaced; instead, we have built onto it. The grid has expanded to serve more homes and industries, and both coal and renewables have added to the mix. The challenge is that demand growth is so fast that even rapid renewable additions haven't yet reduced coal's absolute generation. In fact, the gap between coal and clean generation in TWh is wider now than ever before. ## What has India built? Installed capacity by source This chart shows the engines India has installed, not the actual electricity they produce. Installed capacity is the maximum potential output, measured in million kilowatts. By the end of 2024, total installed capacity had reached 531.46 million kilowatts, over 15 times the 34.38 million kW of 1980. Look at the lines: fossil capacity (mostly coal plants) stands at 315 million kW. But renewable capacity has surged, particularly solar. Solar capacity exploded from essentially zero in 2000 to 97.38 million kW in 2024. Wind capacity climbed to 48.16 million kW. Together, renewables reached 204.11 million kW. This is the hardware side: the power plants ready to generate. However, a coal plant can run around 70-80% of the time, while solar farms only produce when the sun shines, giving them a much lower capacity factor. So a solar capacity addition of 97 GW doesn't mean it will generate nearly as much as 97 GW of coal. That is why the generation mix still heavily favours coal. But the rapid solar build signals a future pivot, and the rising renewable capacity line is the most dynamic element on this chart. ## What share of electricity actually comes from renewables? Renewables, including large hydro, supplied 24.1% of India's electricity in 2025. That is up from 19.8% in 2024, a sharp jump driven partly by strong hydro generation (178 TWh). The longer view shows a U-shaped history: back in 1985, renewables contributed 27.8% of electricity, driven entirely by large hydro. As thermal power expanded in the following decades, the share fell to about 14% in the mid-2000s. Only recently has it climbed back, thanks to solar and wind additions. This chart tracks that share from 1985 to 2025. The line dipped then rose. The definition of renewables here includes large hydro, which some frameworks exclude. If large hydro were removed, the share would be lower, perhaps in the teens. Nevertheless, the direction is now upward, and the 2025 figure is a new high for the modern era. It shows that the grid is becoming greener, even if coal still rules. The jump from 2024 to 2025 is the single largest annual increase in the series, a sign of accelerating change. ## Is the grid getting cleaner per unit? Carbon intensity measures how many grams of CO2 are emitted for each kilowatt-hour of electricity produced. In 2000, India's average intensity was 740 gCO2/kWh. By 2025, it had fallen to 670 gCO2/kWh, a drop of about 9%. This is progress: the grid is becoming less polluting per unit of electricity. The line chart shows a gentle downward trend over 25 years, with occasional bumps. The reduction comes from greater efficiency at coal plants, a larger share of renewables, and more hydro. However, a falling intensity does not mean total emissions are falling. Because total electricity generation more than tripled from 573 TWh to 2,083 TWh, absolute CO2 emissions from power generation rose enormously. The lower per-unit number is like a car getting better mileage, but if you drive many more kilometres, total fuel use still goes up. India is driving much more, and that's the tension captured by this metric: we are cleaning up the grid per kilowatt-hour, but we are producing so many more kilowatt-hours that the total climate impact continues to grow. ## Sources - Ember: Yearly electricity data (generation, demand, carbon intensity). - EIA: International electricity capacity statistics. - OWID: Renewable share of electricity production. --- Source: [This Indian Life](https://thisindianlife.today/articles/how-does-india-generate-electricity/) · Updated 2026-06-02. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Please cite as "This Indian Life — https://thisindianlife.today".