Billionaire Gautam Adani may not tie up with TotalEnergies as of now for developing the green hydrogen project in India, as per reports. In February, France-based TotalEnergies, which is one of the largest foreign investors in billionare Gautam Adani’s business empire, said it would put its participation in the ports-to-energy conglomerate’s $50 billion hydrogen project on hold after the Hindenburg Research came out with a scathing report on its operations. Earlier it is said the French giant has agreed had to buy a 25 per cent stake in Adani New Industries Ltd. for an undisclosed sum to help fund green hydrogen projects in the country. Adani’s first green hydrogen venture is a 5 $ billion integrated facility, which will include manufacturing plants for wind turbines and solar modules and renewable generation capacity. TotalEnergies had announced its partnership with the Adani group in June 2022. Both the companies had outlined a capex plan of $50 billion to set up a 2.5 million metric tonnes per annum (mmtpa) of green H2 manufacturing capacity over the next 10 years, with the first phase of 1.0 mmtpa expected to be commissioned before 2030. Though TotalEnergies did not sign a contract.
Adani Enterprises will invest about $300 million in the hydrogen business in the year through March and this will start to rise rapidly from next year. Overall, the company plans $3.7 billion in capital investment during the year. As part of the partnership announced in June 2022, ANIL was to contribute its knowledge of the Indian market, execution capabilities, operations excellence, and capital management philosophy, whereas TotalEnergies was to bring its understanding of the global market, credit enhancement and financial strength to lower the financing costs along with expertise in underlying technologies. ANIL had plans to manufacture green hydrogen and its downstream products such as ammonia, urea, methanol, and ethanol at its Khavda and Mundra SEZ facilities. The Khavda site has a land bank of 71,000 acre, which has a large-scale renewable deployment potential of 20 GW due to its high wind and solar resource potential. The company plans to use the alkaline and PEM electrolysis process to produce 2.5 million tonnes of green H2 annually (by FY31) at Khavda.