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Abstract

India's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trajectory will be critical to keeping global temperature rise well below 2 C. India has a vast and heterogeneous socio-economic landscape that shapes household consumption patterns across regions and settlement types. To resolve differences at the regional, urban/rural, and socio-economic levels, we use a bottom-up method based on physical quantities and regional prices for thirty-three basic household goods. Here we show that this high-resolution approach, applied to 35 states and union territories in India for the period 2011–2012, reveals substantial differences in household GHG emissions across expenditure groups and settlement types. Per capita emissions are higher in urban areas (2.7 tCO eq) than in rural areas (2.2 tCO eq), but rural households account for two-thirds of total household emissions (2.6 GtCO eq). Major contributors include fuel and lighting (1015 MtCO eq), milk and dairy products (610 MtCO eq), meat and eggs (430 MtCO eq), and transportation (275 MtCO eq). Six states alone contribute half of the total emissions. The top 10% of households emit about four times more per capita than the bottom 10%, with particularly pronounced disparities in transportation emissions, where urban inequalities are about twice those of rural areas. Achieving adequate nutrition for the most deprived households by 2012 would have increased total emissions by 14.5% (0.37 tCO per capita, 83% rural). These findings highlight the factors underlying regional and socio-economic disparities in household emissions and provide a basis for designing region-specific policies that mitigate emissions where needed while improving development outcomes for the most vulnerable, which is essential for effective and equitable low-carbon development in India's diverse contexts.