By Aditya Kalra
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – India’s Andhra Pradesh has signed renewables investment pacts worth a total of around $16 billion with three companies including India’s Adani 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 told Reuters on Tuesday.
The investments will create 38,000 jobs, said the officials, who declined to be named as the southern Indian state is yet to formally announce full 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, which will involve an investment of about 600 billion Indian rupees ($7.74 billion).
The rest will come from Greenko and Aurobindo, which will set up projects related to hydro, solar and wind power.
“Andhra 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.
During one of the panel discussions in the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos, the state’s chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy said the state has the potential to increase the renewable energy installed capacity to up to 33,000 megawatt.
India has plans to install 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, in a bid to cut carbon emissions and clean up air in its cities.
Adani and fellow Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani are vying to be at the forefront of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambition to ramp up 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 say.
(Reporting by Aditya Kalra in Davos; Editing by Alexander Smith)