Gautam Adani-led Adani Enterprises proposed to develop 1,000 MW of solar power capacity in Australia over the next five years. The news has been confirmed by the company in a stock exchange statement on Friday.
The announcement came on a day the apex court in Australia’s Queensland state rejected appeals by some environmental groups against granting of mining lease and environmental clearance to Adani Enterprises’ $7 billion coal mine project. The project has meet with delays in execution because of lawsuits by environmental groups.
Appreciating the court’s decision, a company spokesperson said the ruling would pave the way towards commencing the work in 2017 on the Carmichael mine and related projects, which include a railway line and expansion of port activities at Abbott Point.
The company also said in its stock exchange filing on Friday that it had reached an agreement with The Whyalla City Council in South Australia to build a $200 million solar generation project in the northern part of Whyalla.
The project would include a 100MW solar generation plant, with potential capacity of up to 150MW, which would make it one of the biggest in Australia on one site, it said.
The solar projects are in addition to Adani’s $16.5 billion investment in the planned Carmichael coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin as well as rail and port facilities.
Construction of the Whyalla solar project is set to start mid-2017 and be completed in around 12 months. The workforce will crest at 350 employees, with full-time operational staff to number up to five. A land purchase agreement has been endorsed with the council for the site, which is in an industrial land estate.
Adani currently has a total of more than 1,400MW solar generation projects in India, planned or operational, including one of the world’s largest solar plants in Tamil Nadu which has a capacity of 650MW.
Jeyakumar Janakaraj, the CEO of the company’s Australian operations said that Australia presented huge solar opportunities. Australia has enormous such opportunities because it had the highest solar radiation per square meter of any continent in the world.
Janakaraj also said that together with the company’s $3.3 billion dollars of investment to date across its mine, rail and port projects in Queensland, Adani’s devices to pursue solar investment opportunities mirror the confidence the company has in the Australian market.
Owing to the plans of Adani Enterprises, Adani Enterprises share price closed 3% higher in yesterday’s trade against 1.87% rise in the Benchmark Index Nifty. Adani Enterprises is the top 500 performing stock for the quarter as identified by Dynamic Levels for the quarter.
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