What are India's operating, build and combined margin factors for FY 2025-26?

For FY 2025-26 CEA gives an operating margin of 0.963, a build margin of 0.446 and a combined margin of 0.705 t CO2 per MWh, adjusted for cross-border transfers. These describe the power a project displaces. They are for carbon project baselines, not for a company's Scope 2 footprint.

What each margin means

• Operating margin: average emissions of stations excluding low-cost and must-run sources, such as hydro and nuclear.
• Build margin: average emissions of the most recent 20% of capacity additions by net generation, including renewables.
• Combined margin: weighted average of the two, 50:50 by default.

Five-year trend, t CO2 per MWh

• Build margin: 0.869, 0.867, 0.552, 0.512, 0.446 from FY 2021-22 to FY 2025-26
• Combined margin: 0.915, 0.919, 0.757, 0.736, 0.705
• Operating margin: between 0.960 and 0.971 throughout

Why the build margin fell

From FY 2023-24 CEA counts renewable generation in the build margin. New capacity is now mostly solar and wind, so the build margin nearly halved and pulled the combined margin down with it.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads electricity and fuel invoices into dated, site-level records, useful as monitoring evidence for the project's own consumption and output. It does not register or issue carbon credits.

• Weighted average vs combined margin
• CCTS tool BM-T-003
• Wind and solar project factor

Sources: CEA, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, User Guide and database, Version 22.0 (August 2026)

Last reviewed 2026-10-23.