Power has started flowing from the first phase of a 30-gigawatt renewable energy park being built in western India, the company behind the megaproject said Wednesday.

Adani Green Energy said it had operationalized the 551-megawatt solar plant in Khavda, Gujarat, by supplying power to the national grid. The company plans to develop the park comprising solar and wind power over the next five years.

When complete, the site would be the largest renewable energy installation in the world, powering over 16 million homes and avoiding 58 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, the company said.

AGEL, the clean energy division of the Adani Group conglomerate, has an operating renewables portfolio of more than 9 GW spread across 12 states.

"Adani Green Energy is creating one of the world's most extensive renewable energy ecosystems for solar and wind," Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani said in a statement. "Through bold and innovative projects like the Khavda RE plant, AGEL continues to set higher global benchmarks and rewrite the world's planning and execution standards for giga-scale renewable energy projects."

Although India depends on coal for most of its electricity generation, the country has a rapidly growing clean energy industry, centered on solar power.

In 2022, the country added 13.9 GW of solar capacity, equivalent to the U.K's entire solar fleet at the end of 2021, independent energy think tank Ember said in a report released early last year.

India had an installed non-fossil energy capacity of about 180 GW as of November, according to the national investment facilitation agency Invest India.

India has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2070 and reduce the carbon intensity of the economy by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030. A key component of that plan is generating more than 500 GW of renewable energy, or 50% of total installed power capacity, from non-fossil sources by the end of the decade.


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--Reporting by Abdul Latheef, alatheef@opisnet.com; Editing by Michael Kelly, mkelly@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-14-24 1357ET