The richest man in Asia, who is behind the Indian winner of the Haifa port tender, is turning to a surprising new area of investment: green energy. Although about 62% of the income of Gautam Adani, who is also the third richest man in the world, comes from coal mining, one of the most polluting fields.
■ Meet the Indian billionaire who purchased Haifa Port and will compete with the Chinese
Adani, most of whose assets consist of investments in fossil fuels, has recently expanded into investments in other areas, and now it wants to change its international perception – and above all to convince future investors that it supports green energy.
Adani is not the only tycoon, or the first, to make an appeal to green investments, but with a value of $143 billion, it is the richest.
The jump in fuel and natural gas prices in the past year has increased the value of Adani’s company shares by about 1,000%, and Adani has doubled its value from $64 billion to $143 billion – an amount that places him as the third richest person in the world, along with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk before him in the list.
Adani will invest about 70 billion dollars until 2030 in the development of green energy infrastructure. Among other things, the investments include three huge production plants, powered by renewable energy, including solar energy. According to the group’s estimates, the new plants will produce about 45 gigawatts, in addition to about 300 million tons of hydrogen, a green energy produced from water.
“The Adani Group is committed to investing 70 billion dollars in favor of green energy. We will build 3 huge factories based on green energy, and thus India will become the country with the most production based on green energy,” Adani said at a ceremony of the USIBC organization, which works to strengthen business partnerships between India and the USA, where he received an award for international leadership.
Another investment of his, revealed last week, is 7.2 billion dollars, intended for alumina and iron mining.
From the beginning, the basis of Adani’s business was coal mining, and even now, 62% of its revenue depends on this market. In 2020 alone, Adani purchased 8 new coal mines, and in an interview with Bloomberg in 2019, he claimed that economic growth in India would be impossible without coal mining.
India ranks third in global pollution
India is the third country in carbon pollution, after China and the USA. And while the USA’s goal of zero pollution is 2050 and China’s is 2060, in India the goal is only 2070.
Adani now claims that his support for green energy is intended to strengthen India’s energy security, but it is possible that the decision is influenced by protests that arose in Australia when he tried to build a coal mine there, and the fear of further protests in the world, along with the desire to expand globally.
close to the Prime Minister of India
Adani is one of the closest businessmen to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This can be seen in the joint activity between Adani’s businesses and government purposes. For example, in 2021, Adani started building a port in Sri Lanka, a move encouraged by Modi to allow an Indian foothold in the port, which is controlled by Chinese companies. Another result of the closeness between the businessman and the government is that Adani invests in infrastructure, information centers and transportation infrastructure, according to the government’s needs, according to Bloomberg.
Adani is also the businessman behind the purchase of Haifa Port. The Adani group under his control, in cooperation with the Israeli company Gadot, won the tender for the Haifa port last July with an offer of 4.1 billion shekels, about a billion shekels above expectations. According to the proposal, the group will pay 3.9 billion shekels, with the state giving a kind of “bonus” of 200 million shekels, for the fact that the Indian Adani is a strategic investor (70% of the deal).
Last week, the Committee for the Sale of State Shares approved the Adani-Gadot group’s request for an extension to the financial closure in the tender for the privatization of Haifa Port. The request and the extension come after the group planned to obtain financing of NIS 2.8-3 billion, financing that they have not obtained so far.
Adani founded the Adani Group when he was only 26 years old, in 1988. But his path to an estimated fortune of over 100 billion dollars and ownership of huge ports in India, Australia and other countries in the East was not short. He started as a young diamond agent, and after only two years he had already established his own diamond brokerage company in Mumbai. In the early 1980s, he was appointed the operations manager of his brother’s textile trading enterprise, and thus took his first steps in the world of trading and importing.