27 SEP 2026 — A study published on 25 September describes two Indian air-pollution trends moving in opposite directions. Deaths in Indian cities linked to pollution from power plants rose from about 15,000 in 2000 to nearly 300,000 in 2020, it estimates.
Over the same years, cleaner cooking fuels cut deaths from smoke inside homes. Both changes trace to the same two decades of economic growth, most of it powered by coal.
Growth that ran on coal
The paper, in Nature Cities, was led by Basudev Swain, who did the work at the University of Oxford and has since moved to Goethe University Frankfurt. His co-authors are in Britain, Germany and India.
Between 2000 and 2020, India's GDP per head roughly tripled and electricity demand rose nearly fourfold, from about 450 to about 2,000 terawatt-hours. The authors find that each 1% rise in GDP went with a 1.14% rise in demand.
Coal supplied about 76% of generation. India had 71 coal-fired power plants before 2000, the Oxford release says, and commissioned 182 more between 2001 and 2024.
What changed in city air
Burning coal releases sulphur dioxide, which forms sulphate particles in the air. Sulphate's share of urban airborne particles rose from 35.5% in 2000 to 46.4% in 2020, and the power sector's contribution to those particles went from 16% to 36%.
Total deaths attributed to fine particles in Indian cities rose from about 670,000 to about 870,000, an increase of roughly 30%. The power sector's part of that total grew far faster than the rest.
These are modelled estimates, not counted deaths. They combine measured and simulated pollution with standard exposure-response relationships, the method behind most national air-pollution mortality figures. The trend is the dependable part; any single year's number carries a wide margin.
What improved indoors
The same growth moved families away from wood, dung and kerosene for cooking. Access to clean cooking fuels and technologies rose from about 25% of households in 2000 to about 75% in 2023.
Deaths from household air pollution fell from roughly 1.25 to 1.30 million a year in 2010 to about 1 million in 2023. That household toll is the larger number in the study, and it moved in the right direction.
"This is not simply a story of development making pollution worse," Swain said in the release. Rising incomes paid for a transition to cleaner household energy, with real health benefits.
Why the two trends meet
The authors see the two results as opposite health consequences of the same growth. Rising incomes cleaned up the air inside homes, while the coal that powered the rise dirtied the air over cities.
The two numbers are not the same size. Household air pollution still accounts for about a million deaths a year, more than three times the power-sector estimate. The study highlights the direction. One line is falling; the other is climbing steeply from a low base.
Co-author Rui Song pointed to a second cost in the release: coal emissions can also reduce the output of solar panels, the technology meant to replace it.
What the authors recommend
The paper concludes that decarbonising electricity generation is needed to improve urban air and public health while growth continues. Its figures point to sulphate from coal as the part of city pollution that grew most.
The study stops at 2020 for city air. India's demand has kept rising since, so the open question is whether new generation is being built cleaner than the plants that drove these numbers.
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