Gautam Adani was 4 decades old and billions of dollars were stripped from the hustle and bustle of the merchant he became at the age of 15, when he dropped out of school and left home for Mumbai’s diamond district.
But he’s still in a hurry. Over the past 5 years, Mr. Adani, an Indian industrialist, has seen his net worth skyrocket by 1,440 percent, to around $120 billion, making him Asia’s richest man and the world’s richest man. one of the four richest people on earth.
A significant portion of that wealth comes from mining, transporting and burning coal, as India has doubled its fossil fuel footprint to power its rapidly growing economy and deliver goods. million people out of poverty.
However, Mr. Adani is also poised to be the decisive force in India’s green future, pledging tens of billions of dollars to develop renewable energy alongside investments in coal. Much depends on how well he balances.
Last year, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – with whom Mr. Adani has a long relationship – pledged that India would reach net carbon emissions by 2070, a major milestone for the country, albeit target decades behind other major countries. .
The country has already made some progress towards that goal. India, with its abundant source of sunlight, now ranked fourth in solar energy production, has increased its capacity more than 100 times between 2011 and 2021. Mr. Modi has pledged that India, the polluter The world’s third largest carbon polluter, will get about 50% of its energy from renewable sources, including solar, wind and green hydrogen, by 2030, up from about 40% today.
However, Modi and Adani’s emphasis on economic growth means that India will burn coal in greater quantities than ever before, for decades to come. That has raised questions about what role the nation, projected to be the world’s fastest-growing energy consumer in the coming decades, will ultimately play in pressing efforts. globally to reduce heat-trapping emissions and prevent climate catastrophe.
Mr. Adani, 60, represents the muscular confidence of a country that is taking advantage of global reform of power in the midst of Russia’s war in Ukraine, despite criticism for his growing expansion in the coal sector while seeking to change his image from coal baron to climate warrior.
In an interview at the home he keeps in New Delhi, Mr. Adani said it would be unfair to ask India to sacrifice growth disproportionately for global climate goals. Places like the United States and Europe have been much larger carbon emitters for centuries and reap the benefits of development.
“India has to move from developing to developed, and energy is like a food,” Mr. Adani said. His consortium, he added, is delivering “what my country and its citizens demand: reliable, affordable power.”
“We have always aligned our business and our business philosophy, based on what the country needs,” he said.
The parallel and perhaps opposing paths that Mr. Adani and his country are descending can be seen in Mundra, the coastal city in the western state of Gujarat where the Adani Group has built its largest private port India.
Next to Mundra Port is both a solar panel factory and a coal-fired power plant. Formerly a barren land, a scorched salt marsh, with signs along its private roads and in its factories urging people to save electricity, is now the clearest symbol for Adani holds the power of the Indian economy.
The company has ambitious plans to expand its solar and wind installations near the port, but most of the electricity in the Adani special economic zone in Mundra comes from coal. A conveyor belt brings imported coal straight from the pier to the two plants that jointly build India’s largest thermal power plant. The energy generated there is transmitted as far as the State of Haryana, hundreds of miles to the north.
The Adani Group has begun manufacturing its own cells for solar panels, with plans to engineer the rest of the material in the supply chain over the next few years. Already a distributor of wind energy on its extended transmission lines, the company is also building its own turbines. It plans to build two battery plants and pour cash into green hydrogen, a key component of Mr. Adani’s renewable energy strategy.
Mr. Adani grew up in a bustling medieval enclave in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat. After leaving home to engage in the diamond trade in Mumbai, he returned to running his brother’s small plastic factory. He turned to imports when the Indian economy began to liberalize in the early 1990s.
In an interview with The New York Times, he said he learned the value of controlling the supply chain when his family’s plastic factory faced a severe shortage of polymers. In the late 1990s, he said, he applied that knowledge when India was opening up its economy and facing a severe energy deficit. Most recently in the early 2000s, 300 million to 400 million Indians were without access to electricity.
Mr. Adani currently presides over a $200 billion consortium that includes businesses as diverse as apples, cement and military drones, and he is moving into acquisitions India’s Ultimate Independent News Channel. The centerpiece is his energy empire, with a private railway used to transport coal and other goods, as well as dozens of ports on India’s east and west coasts.
His rapid ascent was not without controversy. His company was investigated on suspicion of applying tax relief measures on imported coal and equipment, but was ultimately cleared. And a huge number Stocks up 1,200 percent Over the past two years Adani Enterprises, a subsidiary focused on new business ventures, has attracted much scrutiny. Much of the trading activity has been traced back to parent companies based in tax havens, sparking speculation that it has been manipulated.
The stock market rally was especially stunning amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged India’s economy and left hundreds of millions unemployed and dependent on government food rations.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Adani said regulators were welcome to investigate securities activity.
He and his family tightly control their corporation. He is the chairman of all six of its publicly listed companies, and his brother, son, and grandson hold executive positions. As the business takes on huge debts to finance its rapid expansion, a subsidiary of Fitch Ratings has warned of a high risk of “key personnel”, with the corporation being linked. closely with Mr. Adani.
According to Girish Dani, a neighbor and longtime family friend, most of the extended family lives within a mile of his property in Ahmedabad. Mr. Adani and his family, including his wife, Priti, a dentist who runs the family foundation, are followers of Jainism, a religion that emphasizes asceticism.
“He is very gentle and gentle. But in a decision, he is very certain,” said Mr.
RN Bhaskar, a journalist who has written two of Mr. Adani’s biographies, the first being commissioned by his family and the second to be published next month, said the industrialist is still active the way he has. as a teenager in Mumbai.
A diamond trader must be “lightning fast in your responses and a hustler, with the ability to think fast, calculate numbers and risks, scale clients and collateral, and operating on super thin margins,” he said.
“These are the characteristics,” added Mr. Bhaskar, “in Gautam Adani.”
Unlike Mukesh Ambani, a fellow billionaire from Gujarat who has recently surpassed his fortune and who is known for his high-end and lavish parties that gather many stars in Mumbai, Mr. a rather low profile. But his political connections are legion.
Journalists and other observers in Gujarat who have followed Mr Adani’s meteorite ascent say he has benefited from a long relationship with Mr. Modi, the country’s most powerful leader. India for decades.
Mr. Adani said he first met Mr. Modi about 30 years ago when the future prime minister, a fellow Gujarati fellow, was a fiery machine in a Hindu right-wing fraternity known as RSS . As a first generation entrepreneur, Mr. Adani said, he got to know all the political players of Gujarat.
In 2001, Mr. Modi became the premier, the highest position in the state. The following year, he was accused of doing too little to stop community riots that dragged on for months and claimed the lives of more than 1,000 mostly Muslim people. He is temporarily barred from entering the United States.
Mr. Adani, as a participant in overseas roadshows promoting Gujarat as an investment destination, helped restore Mr. Modi’s image by appearing with him. In 2014, when Mr. Modi became prime minister, he flew to New Delhi on an Adani plane.
More recently, Mr. Adani has been granted concessions to coal mining in the face of public outcry in an elephant corridor in the state of Chhattisgarh. And the prime minister’s political alliances in South Asia appear to have allowed Mr. Adani to flourish a special economic zone in Bangladesh and a wind energy project in Sri Lanka.
This has created a widespread perception in India that Mr. Adani’s relationship with Mr. Modi allows him to make any deal he wants, creating a level playing field. Mr. Adani said that he and Mr. Modi treat each other with mutual respect, but that it is not friendship or special treatment.
“It’s a great job this government has done,” he said.
However, Mr. Adani’s biggest coup was in Australia. His Project Carmichael is one of the largest open-pit coal mining operations in the world; To get it done, Mr Adani must withstand a sustainability climate campaign led by activist Greta Thunberg and negotiate with half a dozen Australian governments, as prime ministers come and go. After the financiers withdrew, Mr. Adani had to spend $7 billion himself.
The start of the mine operation this year was by accident: India and Australia signed a free trade agreement in April. Once the deal is approved, Adani Group will be able to import large amounts of coal duty-free.
Adani, already the world’s largest coal trader, is poised to become the world’s largest coal importer. So even if Mr. Adani’s corporation spends 80% of its total investment costs on renewable energy, his critics note that the remaining 20% is still a problem.
“To declare that you care about the climate crisis, that you are part of the transition to clean energy, while building massive new coal mines and coal-fired power plants, and some other works in the pipeline that you wouldn’t accept, that’s totally what Pablo Brait, a campaigner for Market Forces, an environmental advocacy group in Australia, said.
Over the last decade, competition has brought the cost of solar down so much that it is now as cheap as coal in India and sometimes cheaper. However, some of the initial enthusiasm for India’s solar industry now seems to have faded.
The government is not expected to hit its target of 100 gigawatts of grid-connected solar by the end of the year. The industry is struggling due to a lack of technical expertise and qualified labor, as well as reliance on expensive equipment from China.
Adani Group and others are aiming to change that by manufacturing photovoltaic panels and other devices in India. But at the same time, the war in Ukraine only strengthens the argument that India’s most powerful politician and the country’s richest man did it for coal. India has its own supply, and much of the shortfall can be met by overseas Adani mines.
“A war,” Mr. Adani said of climate campaigners in the West, “and look at their exposure.”
Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.
