Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world’s biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland.
The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can’t keep up.
“I don’t even do the math any more,” Sagar Adani told CNN in an interview last week.
Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He’s also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia’s second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India’s biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements.
Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion. It will be the world’s biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes.
The success of the Khavda Renewable Energy Park is critical to India’s efforts to reduce pollution and hit its climate goals while meeting the burgeoning energy needs of the world’s most populous nation and fastest-growing major economy. Coal still accounts for 70% of the electricity India generates.
Situated just 12 miles from one of the world’s most dangerous borders separating India and Pakistan, the park will cover more than 200 square miles and be the planet’s largest power plant regardless of the energy source, AGEL said.
“A region so large, a region that is so unencumbered, there’s no wildlife, there’s no vegetation, there’s no habitation. There is no better alternative use of that land,” said Adani.
The group’s big green plans haven’t been dented by the turbulent year it has had since January 2023, when an American short-seller Hindenburg Research accused it of engaging in fraud over decades.
The Indian mining-to-media conglomerate denounced Hindenburg’s report as “baseless” and “malicious.” But that failed to halt a stunning stock market meltdown that, at one point, wiped more than $100 billion off the value of its listed companies. Gautam Adani’s personal fortune was also hammered, collapsing by more than $80 billion in the month following the release of the report.