We will be India's largest renewable energy player in 2020: Adani Group

The group would invest 70 per cent of its capital expenditure in clean energy and energy efficient systems, declared chairman Gautam Adani

Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, has announced in a LinkedIn blog post that the group will invest 70 per cent of its capital expenditure in clean energy and energy-efficient systems.

He added that the company will become India’s largest renewable energy company this year, and among the top three global solar firms by next year.

Adani said the group aims to become the world’s largest solar power entity by 2025, and the largest renewable power firm by 2030. “We feel confident we will be able to lead one of the fastest global carbon offsets,” he said.

This announcement comes in the wake of investors and infrastructure companies committing allegiance to clean energy and reducing exposure to fossil fuel-dependent industries.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, announced last week that it would pull its investments out of companies that get 25 per cent of their revenues from thermal coal production, adding that it would make no future direct investment in such firms. Business Standard reported that this could have an adverse impact on companies such as NTPC, Adani group and Coal India.

BlackRock has an investment of $26 million, $19 million, and $600,000 in Adani Transmission, Adani Ports & SEZ, and Adani Green Energy, respectively.

Similarly, Siemens — which is providing signalling system to Adani’s Carmichael coal mine and rail project in Australia — has indicated raising commitments in environmentally-conscious businesses. Siemens’ announcement followed environment activist Greta Thurnberg’s appeal to the company to cancel its investment in Adani’s Australia coal project.

The Adani group is constructing among the world’s largest coal mining and rail connectivity project in Australia. The Carmichael project involves construction of a thermal coal mine in the North Galilee Basin and a 388 km multi-user rail line linking the mine site with Abbot Point Port. This will be the first mine in the Galilee Basin, to be developed at a cost of more than $16 billion.

The project has been opposed by the global environment lobby. With recent devastating fires in New South Wales and Victoria, many environment groups have questioned the project, again.

Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaesar has, however, defended the Carmichael project, saying it has been approved under the necessary environment protection laws. “There is practically no legally or economically responsible way to unwind the contract without neglecting fiduciary duties. However, given the importance of legitimate environmental concerns, we have secured the right to pull out of the contract if our customer violates the very stringent environmental obligations.”

Adani operates 12 coal and metal mines in India, as a private mining development operator. Further, it has operational thermal power capacity of 10,440 Mw and 8,760 Mw of upcoming thermal power plants in India. It has solar power capacity of 1,198 Mw and wind power capacity of 347 Mw.

Adani, in his post, said the renewable generation capacity of the group was expected to more-than-double by 2020, with the implementation of 2.9 Gw in under-construction capacity, along with an additional threefold growth touching 18 Gw by 2025.

“To make this happen, we have committed to investing over 70 per cent of our budgeted capex of the energy vertical in clean energy and energy-efficient systems,” he said.

He added that the green expansion plan would also include expansion of the current 1.3-Gw solar cell and module manufacturing plant in Mundra to a 3.5-GW manufacturing facility.

“We are also in discussions on ventures to enable the world’s only 100 per cent green energy-based chemical manufacturing and data centre facilities,” Adani said.