- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
BILLIONAIRE Indian businessman Gautam Adani on Tuesday (21) said while unveiling his infrastructure conglomerate’s green vision that his group will invest $20 billion (£15 billion) over the next decade in generation of renewable energy and component manufacturing to produce the planet’s cheapest green electron.
His announcement came just weeks after Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, announced an investment to the tune of Rs 75,000 crore (£7.4 billion) in clean power and hydrogen fuel over a period of three years.
Adani’s conglomerate plans to increase its renewable power-generation capacity three times over the next four years, foray into green hydrogen production, power all data centres with renewable energy, transform its ports into net carbon zero by 2025 and spend more than 75 per cent of the capital expenditure in green technologies until 2025.
Adani, chairman of the Adani Group, made the announcement while speaking at JP Morgan India Investor Summit.
Adani Group’s “integrated value chain, our scale, and experience puts us on the path to be the producer of the least expensive green electron anywhere in the world,” he said.
The announcements reminded the experts how much desperate the two billionaire businessmen are to dominate the race for green energy generation, something that is expected to define the world’s energy sector in the near future.
On June 24 this year, Ambani unveiled his clean-energy business, leaving the observers curious about the impending race with Adani who has had a strong presence in the renewable space for many years now. Everyone was eager to know what steps India’s second-wealthiest man takes to touch his goal of becoming the country’s biggest player in the sector by 2030.
Ambani said this month that hydrogen can be made from renewable energy at £0.73 per kilogram in a decade’s time. Hydrogen has no carbon emissions and can be used as fuel in industry and automobiles.
On Tuesday, Adani laid out his vision on renewable power and said no company in the world was building a renewable power portfolio on the scale his group was doing.
The Adani Group currently has 4,920 Megawatt (MW) of operational renewable energy generation capacity and another 5,124 MW under execution. It has a confirmed pipeline of 9,750 MW and another 4,500 MW where it is likely to win contracts.
“Today, we are already the world’s largest solar power player when we account for our generating, under construction, and contracted projects. We have done this in just two years and our renewables portfolio has reached our initial target of 25 Gigawatts a full four years ahead of schedule. This puts us well on track to be the world’s largest renewable power generating company by 2030,” Adani said.
This, he said, opens up several new pathways including “setting us up to be one of the largest green hydrogen producers in the world”.
He however did not elaborate on plans to produce hydrogen.
“Our actions clearly indicate that we are putting our money where our mouth is: Over 75 per cent of our planned capex until 2025 will be in green technologies. Today, of our EBITDA from utilities, 43 per cent is already from the green business,” he added.
