Expressing his views on the COVID-19’s economic impact, Gautam Adani says that the pandemic also presents an opportunity to design a new and faster transition to a low-carbon future as he expects the price of solar modules to drop further, as per reports. In January, Adani had said that his group is aiming to become the world”s largest solar power company by 2025 and the biggest renewable energy firm by 2030. Its existing portfolio of renewable power generating assets stood at over 2.5 GW. This is expected to more than double by 2020, with the implementation of 2.9 GW under construction capacity and would further touch 18 GW by 2025.
The price of solar modules has dropped 99 per cent over the past 40 years. Not just solar, he also expects the unit cost of wind power to fall significantly driven by innovation in technology and the massive deployment of new wind projects both on-shore and off-shore. The predominant storage technology on the horizon appears to be hydrogen, added reports.
Adani reportedly conveyed that the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) forecasts that employment in the clean energy sector, currently at $12 million in 2020, could quadruple by 2050, while jobs in energy efficiency and system flexibility could grow by another 40 million. A recent IRENA report projects that this transition could lead to investment opportunities of $19 trillion in solar, wind, battery storage, green Hydrogen, carbon management and energy efficiency by 2050 making it one of the largest global industries. The sector received over $10 billion of FDI inflow over the past decade.