The State of Carbon Disclosure in India.
1,246 BRSR filers. What they disclosed, what they did not, and what we got wrong last time.
Data as at 25 September 2026. Every figure is a company disclosure drawn from SEBI BRSR and XBRL filings. Edition 1 published 20 August 2026; see the correction below.
90.4% of India's 1,246 BRSR filers disclose both Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and 65.2% publish a Scope 3 figure. Confirmed reasonable assurance on BRSR Core now stands at 43.4%, up from 24.2% five weeks ago, almost entirely because our own coverage of assurance statements improved rather than because companies changed. The same is true of that Scope 3 number: we could not state it with confidence until we found and repaired a fault in our own provenance data on the day of publication. What has not moved is depth. Only 20 companies in the entire index, 1.6%, break Scope 3 into the GHG Protocol categories an assurer or an EU buyer can actually test. That number has moved by one company in five weeks.
We withdrew a number, found the fault behind it, and can now state it properly.
Set out in full, because a research series that quietly revises its own figures is worth nothing, and because the fault turned out to be the most interesting thing in this edition.
What Edition 1 published. On 20 August 2026 we reported that 42.1% of Indian BRSR filers disclose a Scope 3 figure. That came from a forensic workaround. The database field marking each Scope 3 value as disclosed or estimated had been left mid-reclassification, so we separated the two populations by testing whether a value sat on an exact multiple of Scope 1, which is the signature of our own modelling.
Why we withdrew it. Re-running that test in September returned anywhere between 27.6% and 70.1%, depending on how much of the unresolved bucket you were willing to trust. A method whose answer moves by 42 percentage points is not a method, it is a guess with arithmetic attached.
What the fault actually was. Rather than publish another estimate, we went back to the extraction records. Every row carries a note describing how its Scope 3 value was obtained, and the two populations separate cleanly. Rows extracted from the September NSE XBRL archive show a continuous, natural spread of Scope 3 to Scope 1 ratios, 653 distinct ratios across 739 rows, with under 1% landing on a modelling constant. Rows left over from the unfinished reclassification batch cluster hard, with 52% sitting exactly on a constant. 485 genuine company disclosures had simply been carrying the wrong label.
The number. 65.2% of Indian BRSR filers publish a Scope 3 figure, 812 of 1,246. Seventeen further rows are confirmed disclosures whose reported magnitude exceeds a thousand times the company's own Scope 1. Those are withheld from company pages pending manual checking, because a probable extraction error attached to a named company is worse than a gap.
Edition 1's 42.1% stays withdrawn. It was nearer the truth than the 27.6% floor we could briefly defend, but it was right by luck rather than by method, and that is not a distinction worth blurring.
The market barely moved. Our ability to see it moved a lot.
Five weeks is far too short a window for a disclosure market to shift. Almost everything below is a change in observation, not in behaviour, and separating the two is the single most useful thing this edition does.
| Measure | Edition 1, 20 Aug | Edition 2, 25 Sep | What actually moved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope 1 and 2 disclosed | 86.8% | 90.4% | Our coverage. More filings parsed. |
| BRSR Core assurance confirmed | 24.2% | 43.4% | Our coverage. Edition 1 called 24.2% a floor; it was. |
| Scope 3 by GHG category | 19 companies | 20 companies | Genuine, and tiny. |
| SBTi validated | 6.3% | 6.5% | Genuine, and tiny. |
| Scoring above 65 | 16 companies | 33 companies | Scoring inputs, not company behaviour. |
| Scope 3 disclosed | 42.1% (withdrawn) | 65.2% | Our provenance data. 485 real disclosures were mislabelled as estimates. |
The assurance line is the one worth sitting with. In August we reported that 302 companies carried confirmed reasonable assurance and said openly that the figure was a floor because we could not establish status for 880 of them. Five weeks later the confirmed count is 541. Not one of those 239 companies obtained assurance in the interval. They already had it. We simply could not see it.
That is the finding hiding inside a data-quality note: the hardest thing about Indian carbon disclosure is not that companies withhold it, it is that what they do publish is close to impossible to read at scale.
Effectively solved.
1,126 companies, 90.4%, disclose both Scope 1 and Scope 2.
BRSR specified these two numbers tightly and the market delivered them at scale. Where a company is missing it is usually a smaller entity in an early filing year. This is the clearest evidence in the dataset that a precisely specified disclosure requirement works.
Between them these companies disclosed 1.29 billion tCO2e of Scope 1. One company, NTPC, accounts for 309 million of that, roughly a quarter of the disclosed national total for listed companies. Sums of disclosed figures double count between power generators and their customers and are not a national inventory.
Twenty companies.
A Scope 3 total on its own is a number without a structure. The GHG Protocol defines fifteen categories, and it is the breakdown that makes a figure testable.
An assurer traces category 1 to procurement records, category 11 to product sales and use assumptions, category 4 to freight invoices. A single aggregate figure cannot be audited, only accepted.
Twenty companies out of 1,246, or 1.6%, disclose Scope 3 broken into GHG Protocol categories. In August it was nineteen. This is the number that has moved least, and it is the number that matters most.
| Categories | Company |
|---|---|
| 15 | Adani Energy Solutions |
| 14 | Balkrishna Industries, PCBL Chemical |
| 12 | Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Wipro |
| 11 | Anupam Rasayan India |
| 10 | Apollo Tyres, Balrampur Chini Mills |
| 8 | Bharti Airtel, Cipla, Hindustan Unilever, Mahindra & Mahindra, UltraTech Cement |
| 7 | HCL Technologies, Infosys, Tech Mahindra |
| 6 | Tata Consumer Products |
| 5 | HDFC Bank |
| 3 | JSW Dulux |
| 1 | AU Small Finance Bank |
That is the complete list. Twenty companies out of 1,246.
Category-level Scope 3 is not a widespread practice with laggards trailing behind it. It is a practice that twenty Indian listed companies have and 1,226 do not.
43.4% confirmed, and the rest is fog.
Reasonable assurance on the nine BRSR Core attributes reaches the top 1,000 listed entities in FY 2026-27.
541 companies are confirmed to carry reasonable assurance on BRSR Core. That is 43.4% of the index, up from a confirmed 302 in August.
Read that as a floor that rose, not as a market that moved. Assurance statements are published as prose inside PDF annual reports, in no fixed location and no fixed format. Every percentage point of that increase was bought with parsing work, and the remainder of the index is not confirmed absent, it is unread.
If a disclosure requires this much effort to observe from outside, it is not yet functioning as a disclosure.
Fewer than one in ten has engaged with SBTi.
| SBTi status | Companies | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Validated targets | 81 | 6.5% |
| Committed | 38 | 3.0% |
| No SBTi engagement recorded | 1,127 | 90.5% |
The four Leaders
| Rank | Company | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dr. Reddy's Laboratories | 98 |
| 2 | HCL Technologies | 96 |
| 2 | Infosys | 96 |
| 4 | PCBL Chemical | 86 |
33 companies now score 65 or above, against 16 in August. That shift is driven by improved scoring inputs, chiefly the assurance coverage described above, and not by 17 companies transforming their disclosure in five weeks. Treat the distribution as a snapshot of what is currently observable, not as a league table with momentum.
Still not publishing
CDP participation. A CDP status is known for 16 of 1,246 companies. That is a statement about our sources, not about the market, so no participation rate is published.
Net-zero adoption. This field was partly populated by Climes modelling in August and the modelled entries still cannot be separated from genuine ones. No adoption rate is published, and no net-zero year appears on a company page unless it came from a filing.
Every company in the index now has a public page.
All 1,246 companies now have an individual disclosure page showing what that company published: Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 where confirmed, category breadth, assurance status, SBTi and CDP, and methodology. Each page states the source and the date, and says plainly where a figure was not found rather than implying one does not exist.
Two rules govern those pages. Only figures a company published itself are attributed to it, so no modelled Scope 3 appears anywhere. And no company is publicly labelled with a negative rating band, because our coverage is imperfect and a page that shames a company for our own blind spot is not research.
Look up any Indian listed company's disclosure record.
Browse the index →What people ask about this data.
What percentage of Indian listed companies disclose Scope 3 emissions?
65.2%, or 812 of India's 1,246 BRSR filers, publish a Scope 3 figure. That figure was established on 25 September 2026 after repairing a fault that had left 485 genuine company disclosures labelled as Climes estimates. Edition 1's figure of 42.1% is withdrawn.
How many Indian companies disclose Scope 3 by GHG Protocol category?
Twenty, or 1.6% of the index, up from nineteen in August. One company, Adani Energy Solutions, discloses all fifteen categories. For the overwhelming majority of companies that report a Scope 3 total, the figure arrives as a single number with no category structure underneath it.
How many Indian companies have BRSR Core reasonable assurance?
541 companies, 43.4% of the universe, are confirmed to carry reasonable assurance, up from a confirmed 302 in August. That rise reflects improved parsing of assurance statements rather than companies newly obtaining assurance. It remains a floor. Reasonable assurance reaches the top 1,000 listed entities in FY 2026-27.
Which Indian companies have the best carbon disclosure?
On Carbon X-Ray Rubric 2.0 the four Leaders scoring 85 or above are Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (98), HCL Technologies (96), Infosys (96) and PCBL Chemical (86). 33 companies out of 1,246 score 65 or above.
Did Indian carbon disclosure improve between August and September 2026?
Barely. Five weeks is too short a window for a disclosure market to move. The genuine changes were one additional company disclosing Scope 3 by category and a handful of new SBTi validations. The larger apparent improvements, in Scope 1 and 2 coverage and in assurance, reflect Climes reading more of the existing filings rather than companies changing behaviour.
Can I cite this report?
Yes. Quote and cite freely with attribution to Climes, The State of Carbon Disclosure in India, Edition 2, September 2026. If a figure attributed to your company is wrong, write to growth@climes.io with the filing reference and it will be corrected and the correction noted in the next edition.
How this was built, and what it cannot tell you.
Universe. 1,246 Indian listed entities with at least one BRSR on file. Non-filers are excluded so every company in the index is assessed on the same basis.
Sources. SEBI BRSR and XBRL filings, BRSR Core assurance statements, the SBTi target dashboard and the CDP registry. Scoring by Carbon X-Ray Rubric 2.0.
Disclosed versus modelled. Every finding rests on company disclosure. No Climes-modelled emissions figure is published as a finding here or on any company page.
Limitations, stated openly:
- Scope 3 provenance was repaired on 25 September 2026 using the extraction note attached to each row. 104 rows remain genuinely modelled and are excluded from every figure here and from every company page. A further 17 are confirmed disclosures whose reported magnitude exceeds a thousand times the company's Scope 1; these are withheld pending manual checking, since that pattern usually indicates an extraction error rather than a real value.
- Assurance status is confirmed for 43.4% and unresolved, not disconfirmed, for the remainder.
- CDP status is unknown for 98.7% of the index, so no CDP figure is published.
- Net-zero target years remain contaminated by August modelling and are excluded from all findings.
- This report counts whether a company disclosed, not whether the figure it disclosed is correct. No Scope 3 magnitude or aggregate is published.
- 587 companies sit in a diversified or unclassified sector bucket, which limits sector analysis.
- Scope 1 and 2 totals are sums of disclosed figures, double count between power generators and their customers, and are not a national inventory.
Next edition. December 2026, with FY 2025-26 filings as they land, restored Scope 3 provenance, and the first genuine year-on-year movement figures.