Adani group plans £79 billion green push: Chairman

ADANI group will invest over $100 billion (£78.55bn) in energy transition projects and manufacturing capability to produce components required to generate green energy.

The coal-to-ports conglomerate is building solar parks, wind farms, and facilities to manufacture solar panels, wind power turbines, and electrolysers for making green hydrogen.

At an event organised by Crisil in New Delhi, Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani said energy transition and digital infrastructure are trillion-dollar opportunities that will transform India both locally and globally.

Adani group wants to produce the "world's least expensive green electron" that will become the feedstock for several sectors that must meet the sustainability mandate.

"To make this happen, we are building the world's largest single-site renewable energy park in Khavda, in Gujarat. This single location will generate 30 GW of power, thereby taking our total renewable energy capacity to 50 GW by 2030," he said.

The Indian billionaire observed that the energy transition space will change the global energy landscape. The global transition market was valued at approximately $3 trillion (£2.35tn) in 2023 and is expected to double by 2030, and thereafter double every 10 years till 2050, he added.

He said India aims to install 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. "This ambitious target will require annual investments of over $150bn (£118bn). The transition to green energy in India is expected to generate millions of new jobs in sectors such as solar and wind, energy storage, hydrogen and its derivatives, EV charging stations, as well as grid infrastructure development," he said.

Regarding digital infrastructure, Adani said the heart of all the action is the Data Centre - the critical infrastructure needed to power computational needs, especially AI workloads for machine learning algorithms, natural language processing, computer vision, and deep learning.

"In fact, it is anticipated that by the year 2030, the world will need 100 to 150 GW of additional green energy just for the AI data centres. We already have India's largest order book for data centres and are now in discussions for additional gigawatt-scale green AI data centres which we are uniquely positioned to deliver," he said.

This will, however, need massive amounts of energy, making the data centre business the largest energy-consuming industry, he said.

Adani said the infrastructure required for energy transition and digital transformation are now inseparable as the technology sector becomes the largest consumer of the precious green electrons. (PTI)