India’s cement industry is entering a more demanding phase of its decarbonisation journey as construction and infrastructure demand continue to rise. The sector is already among the country’s largest industrial sources of carbon dioxide, while new policy roadmaps point to sharply lower emissions intensity by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2070. The challenge is to expand cement supply without locking cities into a higher-carbon building model.
India is the world’s second-largest cement producer and had about 670 million tonnes of installed capacity in 2025-26, according to recent industry estimates. Cement accounts for roughly 7% of India’s CO₂ emissions. Demand is expected to rise substantially as housing, transport and industrial infrastructure expand, making the sector’s transition important not only for manufacturers but also for the carbon footprint of future buildings and urban infrastructure. The difficulty lies in the chemistry of cement itself. Limestone must be heated to produce clinker, releasing carbon dioxide during calcination. Fuel used in high-temperature kilns adds further emissions, while electricity consumption contributes to the remainder. Recent research places the broad shares at around 57–60% from calcination, 27–31% from thermal energy and 10–13% from electricity. That makes efficiency alone insufficient. The industry is increasingly looking at a combination of clinker substitution, alternative fuels, renewable electricity, waste-heat recovery and eventually carbon capture. Blended cements can reduce the amount of clinker required by using materials such as fly ash and slag, while renewable power can cut emissions associated with grinding and other electrical operations.
A sector-specific roadmap developed by the Global Cement and Concrete Association India and TERI targets a reduction in average emissions intensity from about 0.68 tonnes of CO₂ per tonne of cement in 2020 to 0.56 tonnes by 2030 and 0.51 tonnes by 2047. The pathway ultimately targets net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2070. The scale of the task becomes clearer in the government’s latest long-term assessment. NITI Aayog projects cement production could rise from about 391 million tonnes in 2023 to around 2.1 billion tonnes by 2070. Its decarbonisation roadmap therefore places greater emphasis on refuse-derived fuels, clinker substitution, carbon capture and the effective use of carbon-market mechanisms.
For urban India, this transition has a practical consequence. Lower-carbon cement can reduce the embodied emissions of buildings, roads and other infrastructure without reducing the need for construction itself. But technologies such as carbon capture remain capital-intensive, while cleaner fuels and supplementary materials require reliable supply chains. The next test is therefore whether cement decarbonisation can keep pace with demand. The sector’s progress will ultimately be measured not by individual green products, but by whether India can build the infrastructure it needs while steadily reducing the carbon embedded in that growth.
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