Andhra in $16 bn pacts with Adani, Greenko
DAVOS: Andhra Pradesh has signed renewables investment pacts worth a total of around $ 16 billion with companies including an Adani unit and an affiliate of Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund, two state government officials said.
The investment commitments were struck with Adani Green Energy, GIC- backed Greenko, and India’s Aurobindo Realty & Infrastructure during the World Economic Forum at Davos, the officials said on Tuesday.
The investments will create 38,000 jobs, said the officials, who declined to be named as the state is yet to formally announce the details of the pacts.
The agreement with Adani, run by India’s richest man Gautam Adani, is to establish green energy projects including a 3,700 megawatt pumped hydro storage project and 10,000 megawatt solar power project. The solar project will involve an investment of about Rs60,000 crore ($7.74 billion).
The rest will come from Greenko and Aurobindo, which will set up projects related to hydro, solar, and wind power.
“Andhra Pradesh wants to be the leader in this space. The green energy projects will be for solar, wind, and power storage, to push towards a decarbonized economy,” one of the officials said.
The state has the potential to increase the renewable energy installed capacity to up to 33,000 megawatt, chief minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy stressed during one of the panel discussions in Swiss Alpine resort of Davos.
India has plans to install 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, to cut carbon emissions and clean up the air in its cities.
Adani and fellow billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who heads
Reliance Industries, are vying to be at the forefront of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambition to ramp up the green energy capacity in the world’s second-most populous country.
Both men’s business empires are trying to improve their clean energy credentials as investors pay more attention to the environmental impact of their businesses and make decisions based on ESG ratings, analysts said. The ESG rating is a measure of a company’s exposure to long-term environmental, social, and governance risks.