Adani Group to Invest $100 Billion Across New Energy, Data Centres by 2032

GG News Bureau

Mumbai, 29^th Sept. Gautam Adani, the world’s second richest person, announced on Tuesday that his group will invest $100 billion over the next decade, primarily in energy transition and digital opportunities, as well as sectors such as aerospace and defense, metals and petrochemicals.

Adani has been aggressively expanding into new sectors, the most recent being a $6.5 billion acquisition of Ambuja Cements Ltd and ACC Ltd, which instantly made the group the country’s second-largest cement maker.

The group also announced an investment of up to 57,575 crore in the alumina and iron ore industries. Beginning as a commodity trading company in the late 1980s, the Adani group has expanded its portfolio to include ports, airports, power, renewable energy, gas distribution, and data centres.

“As a group, we will invest over $100 billion of capital in the next decade. We have earmarked 70% of this investment for the energy transition space. We are already the world’s largest solar player and intend to do far more. In this context, Adani New Industries is the manifestation of the bet we are making in the energy transition space. It is our commitment to investing $70 billion in an integrated hydrogen-based value chain,” Adani said at the Forbes Global CEO Conference 2022 in Singapore.

Adani’s energy transition plans include adding 45 gigawatts (GW) of hybrid renewable power generation capacity to its existing capacity of 20GW.

He went on to say that this would result in the commercialization of three million metric tons of green hydrogen, with the group constructing three gigafactories in India.

In addition, the group is establishing a 10GW silicon-based photovoltaic value chain that will be integrated backwards from raw silicon to solar panels, a 10GW integrated wind-turbine manufacturing facility, and a 5GW hydrogen electrolyser factory.

“Today, we can confidently state that we have a line of sight to first—become one of the least expensive producers of the green electron—and thereafter—the least expensive producer of green hydrogen. It is an absolute game changer for India and opens up the unprecedented possibility that India could one day become a net energy exporter,” Adani said.

Adani added that the group’s digital transformation ambitions also seek to benefit from the energy transition proximity.

“The Indian data centre market is witnessing explosive growth. This sector consumes more energy than any other industry in the world, and therefore, our move to build green data centres is a game-changing differentiator,” he said.

The company intends to connect these data centres via a network of terrestrial and globally linked undersea cables drawn at its ports, as well as to develop consumer-based super-apps that will bring hundreds of millions of Adani’s B2C customers onto a single digital platform.

“Once done, the monetization possibilities are endless. We also just finished building the world’s largest sustainability cloud that already has a hundred of our solar and wind sites running on it—all off a single giant command and control centre that will soon be augmented by a global A-I lab. These are just a few of the adjacencies that are being mainstreamed at our digital businesses at Adani,” he said.

Adani went on to say that India is set to benefit from multi-decade growth tailwinds, making it a relatively bright spot in the global economy in the midst of the current turmoil.

“The real India growth story is just starting. This is the best window for companies to embrace India’s economic resurgence and the incredible multi-decade tailwind the world’s largest and most youthful democracy offers,” the billionaire said.