India's cement emissions rose 60% as the world's stood still
Change in CO2 from cement making, million tonnes, 2014 to 2024, by country. World total: 1,488 to 1,490 Mt.
- 1. Heat that bleaches coral reached 84% of the world's reefs
- 2. Swiss glaciers lost over 5% of their ice in 2026
- 3. Canada's 2023 fires burned more than twice the old record
- 4. Tropical forests lost a record 6.7 million hectares in 2024
- 5. Drought cut Panama Canal transits by a fifth in 2024
- 6. China adds more forest each year than any other country
- 7. Kyoto's cherries now bloom earliest in 1,200 years of records
- 8. Brazil's Amazon lost the least forest on record
- 9. Three in four Bangkok residents now live on a floodplain
- 10. Indonesia now emits more CO2 from energy than Germany
- 11. Iran's gas flaring has doubled in ten years
- 12. Grid gas SF6 is building up at a record pace
- 13. Syria has lost more stored water than drought-famous Iran
- 14. Guyana now emits more CO2 per person than Britain
- 15. Nearly 20 million Shanghai residents live in a flood zone
- 16. Indonesia climbed from tenth to fourth in CO2 from coal
- 17. Brazil's Amazon north added 85% of its new cattle
- 18. Estonia cut carbon per person more than any growing economy
- 19. Outside China and India, the world's CO2 fell since 2015
- 20. Cambodia now loses its forest faster than any big-forest country
- 21. Bolivia now loses more tropical forest than Indonesia
- 22. Britain and France now emit below the world's average CO2
- 23. India's cement emissions rose 60% as the world's stood still
- 24. Mexico's Caribbean reefs' three worst heat years were 2023–2025
India's CO2 from cement making, 116 Mt in 2014 to 186 Mt in 2024, while the world total barely moved (1,488 to 1,490 Mt).
China's cement CO2 over the same decade; India, Viet Nam, Turkey and Egypt together made up five-sixths of that fall (+102 Mt).
India's share of the world's cement CO2 in 2024, up from 1 in 13 in 2014: cement's emissions are shifting to fast-building economies.
the numbers & method
Claim types Fact · Interpretation
Global Carbon Budget fossil CO2 emissions by country, edition 2026v11 (Andrew & Peters, CICERO, for the Global Carbon Project; Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23667912, published 26 Oct 2026), file GCB2026v11_MtCO2_flat.csv, column 'Cement' (CO2 released by the chemistry of making cement clinker, not the fuel burned in kilns; territorial), read from the publisher's Zenodo deposit via the progrss vault (GUIDELINES §4.11; global-carbon-project 3 matches, 0 mismatches). Million tonnes CO2, 2014 → 2024: world 1,487.70 → 1,489.71 (+2.01; the sum of 202 and 201 countries equals the world row); China 757.12 → 634.92 (−122.20); India 115.82 → 185.54 (+69.71, +60.2%); Viet Nam 32.69 → 48.87 (+16.18); Turkey 35.82 → 44.78 (+8.96); Egypt 20.33 → 27.21 (+6.88); all other countries +22.48 (the remainder, a progrss calculation; it includes Iraq +10.70 and Japan −6.38, and Sudan, which has a 2014 value but none for 2024). Parts add up exactly. GCP estimates cement CO2 from clinker production; for many smaller countries its 2024 value repeats 2023, which affects only the 'all other countries' bar. India by year: 117.5 (2015), 143.7 (2019), 122.9 (2020), 149.0 (2021), 164.3 (2022), 176.7 (2023), 185.5 (2024), 204.4 (2025, preliminary), so the rise is still going. Start-year check: from 2015 the world rose 3.8% (1,435.4 → 1,489.7) and India 57.9%. World cement CO2 peaked at 1,655.5 Mt in 2021; 2025 preliminary 1,476.7. Shares (progrss calculations): India 7.8% (2014) → 12.5% (2024). Interpretation in takeaway 3 is progrss's reading. Licence: CC BY 4.0; cite Global Carbon Budget (Friedlingstein et al.).
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