India’s electrification journey is taking a remarkable turn, with new research showing the country is outpacing China’s earlier record while relying far less on fossil fuels. According to a January 22, 2026, report by global energy think tank Ember, India is not only electrifying faster than China did at a similar point in its economic development, but it is also doing so with a fraction of the coal and oil consumption. The findings challenge long-held assumptions about how emerging economies must develop—and may signal a new model for the world’s next wave of industrialization.
For decades, the accepted wisdom was that countries needed to follow a linear path to prosperity: move from burning biomass to fossil fuels, and only then—after decades of growth—pivot to clean energy. Kingsmill Bond, strategist at Ember and one of the report’s authors, told Bloomberg News, “The orthodox narrative has been that emerging markets must follow the same path the West and China took—from biomass to fossil fuels and only then to clean energy. India shows that this is no longer inevitable.”
To make a fair comparison between the two Asian giants, Ember adjusted each country’s gross domestic product for purchasing power, accounting for differences in the cost of living. By this measure, India’s per-capita income of about $11,000 in early 2026 is roughly equivalent to China’s income level in 2012. At this comparable stage, India’s per-capita consumption of coal and oil is only a fraction of China’s, and even in absolute terms, India’s fossil fuel use is rising more slowly than China’s does now, despite India being earlier in its industrialization journey.
Yet, the story is not one of India having broken free from fossil fuels entirely. Coal remains the backbone of the Indian power system, and government plans could potentially double coal-fired capacity by 2047. Oil demand is also rising rapidly, with India’s consumption growth expected to have outpaced China’s last year. However, the broader trend is clear: as green electricity expands, fossil fuels are playing a smaller role per person than they did in China at a similar stage.
One major reason for this shift is the dramatic reduction in the cost of key electrotechnologies. As SocialNews.XYZ reported, rapidly declining costs of solar panels and batteries have unlocked a new energy path for India—one that simply wasn’t available to China a decade ago. Back in 2004, when China crossed 1,500 kWh of electricity use per capita, coal generation was about ten times cheaper than nascent solar photovoltaics (PV), leading coal to account for nearly 70 percent of the growth in China’s electricity generation over the following decade. By contrast, as India crosses the same threshold in 2026, solar-plus-storage costs about half as much as new coal plants, and the cost gap is only widening as solar and battery prices continue to fall.
In the transport sector, the story is just as striking. In 2011, when China’s road transport oil demand hit 150 litres of gasoline equivalent per capita, batteries were ten times more expensive than they are now, and the electric vehicle industry barely existed. Today, India’s road oil demand stands at 96 litres per capita and is unlikely to ever reach even 150 litres per capita. Electric vehicles are already undercutting internal combustion engines on price, which is expected to lead to a substantial fall in the country’s oil import bill and a reduction in pollution.
Ember’s report notes that in 2024, electric vehicles accounted for about 5 percent of new car sales in India. When China reached the same milestone, its per-capita oil consumption for road transport was about 60 percent higher than India’s is today. Kingsmill Bond argues that India’s peak road-transport oil consumption per person is unlikely ever to reach Chinese levels, a shift with significant implications for emissions, energy security, and economic resilience.
India’s progress is not limited to vehicles. Solar power has made significant inroads, reaching 5 percent of total electricity generation at around $9,000 GDP per capita. China, by contrast, did not hit that mark until its per-capita GDP was about $23,000. Where solar goes, batteries are following: the share of renewable energy tenders paired with battery storage in India climbed from about 12 percent in 2021 to 50 percent in 2024, according to Ember.
The country’s coal-fired generation in 2025 is set to fall year-on-year, even as solar generation continues to rise. Projections by Ember, TERI, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest coal demand in India will plateau through 2030 or 2035, with coal generation unlikely to ever exceed the levels China was burning when its GDP per capita was just $5,000. In all likelihood, India will reach $20,000 GDP per capita without coal generation ever matching China’s historical highs.
Why does this matter so much for India? The economic stakes are enormous. The country imports more than 40 percent of its primary energy—coal, oil, and gas—according to the International Energy Agency. That dependence translates into a staggering fossil-fuel import bill of roughly $150 billion a year as of 2026. “To grow and to have energy independence, India has to reduce that terrible burden,” Bond told Bloomberg News. “It needs other solutions.”
This transition is not driven solely by climate altruism. As Bond put it, “Neither India nor China is going electric primarily to cut emissions. They’re doing it because it makes economic sense.” For India, the economics are particularly stark, with clean technology offering a way to power growth while slashing costly fossil-fuel imports.
However, India’s green leap comes with a strategic vulnerability: China’s dominance across the electricity technology supply chain. Beijing controls much of the global manufacturing for solar panels, batteries, and the specialized equipment needed to build domestic capacity elsewhere. This dominance can become a bottleneck, as seen in January 2026 when Reliance Industries paused plans to manufacture lithium-ion battery cells in India after failing to secure key equipment from China. The episode highlights the risks of relying on a single country for critical components, especially as geopolitical tensions and trade disputes flare up.
Despite these challenges, the underlying trajectory is clear. India is fast becoming a leading example of what Ember calls an “electrostate”—a country that meets most of its energy needs through electricity, increasingly generated from clean sources, rather than domestically extracted fossil fuels. No country fully fits that description yet, but India’s progress suggests it may be the first to get there.
As solar, batteries, and electric vehicles become ever cheaper, the advantages of electrification will only grow for countries even poorer than India is today. The energy pathway that makes economic sense for India now, as it rapidly industrializes, is fundamentally different from what made sense for China a decade ago. If this trend holds, India’s experience could become a blueprint for a new generation of emerging economies—one that powers prosperity without locking in decades of fossil-fuel dependence.