Adani bets big on renewable energy

New Delhi: Moving away from polluting coal, billionaire Gautam Adani on Wednesday laid out a blueprint to make his group the world's largest solar power company by 2025 and the biggest renewable energy firm by 2030 through aggressive capacity addition push in these areas.

The $15-billion Adani Group -- a sprawling conglomerate with interests in energy, agri-business, real estate and defence, among others -- plans to double its renewable power generating capacity of current 2.5 gigawatts (GW) by 2020 and further to 18 GW by 2025, Adani wrote in a Linkedin post.

"Our vision is to become the world's largest solar power company by 2025 and largest renewable power company by 2030," the Adani Group chairman wrote.

Adani Group not just owns coal-fired power plants but also coal mines in India and Australia. It has invested big time in coal as the Adani empire of mines, cargo ships, ports and power plants depend heavily on it.

He said the Adani Group has moved quickly into a position to lead the clean energy transformation taking place not just in India but on the global stage that will see the group building one of the largest integrated energy portfolios. "In 2019, we were ranked as the 6th largest solar player globally and as a part of this journey, we are well within reach to be India's largest renewable energy company by 2020 and one of the top three global solar energy companies by 2021. "Our existing portfolio of renewable power generating assets stands today at over 2.5 GW. This is expected to more than double by 2020, with the implementation of 2.9 GW under construction capacity and further record three-fold growth touching 18 GW by 2025," he said.

Adani Group, he said, has committed to investing over 70 per cent of its budgeted capex of the energy vertical into clean energy and energy-efficient systems. "Another key project that has begun taking shape as part of this journey, is the expansion of our 1.3 GW state-of-the-art solar cell and module manufacturing plant in Mundra (in Gujrat) which will turn into a 3.5 GW manufacturing facility," he said adding the group was also in discussions on ventures to enable the world's only 100 per cent green energy-based chemical manufacturing and data centre facilities.

Globally, coal is in steep decline particularly in Western Europe because of competition from those alternative energy sources. But in Asia, demand for coal, the main source of energy, is growing.

In India too, the coal makes up for nearly 60 per cent of the energy usage due to its affordability. But this is changing with the government push to move away from coal to cleaner natural gas and renewable energy sources.

Adani Gas to invest `9,000 cr on distribution

New Delhi: Adani Gas Ltd will invest up to Rs 9,000 crore in setting up city gas distribution network over the next 10 years to retail CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in those areas where it won licences in the recent bidding round, its CEO Suresh Manglani said.

Adani Gas Ltd (AGL) on its own and in a joint venture with state-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) has won city gas licence for 38 geographical areas spread over 71 districts in 15 states in recent bid rounds. "AGL is moving at breakneck speed in order to achieve the commitments made in these bidding rounds and the investment in these projects is pegged at around Rs 8,000 to Rs 9,000 crore in the coming decade," he said.

As part of the government vision to raise the share of natural gas in the energy mix to 15 per cent by 2030 from current 6.2 per cent, the oil regulator PNGRB has in last couple of years conducted two licensing rounds that have expanded the coverage of city gas network to over 400 districts covering 70 per cent of the population of the country.