India’s ReNew Power wants to expand into green hydrogen in Egypt

India’s largest renewable energy firm ReNew Power is studying opportunities to expand into green hydrogen in India, Egypt, and elsewhere, its chairman and CEO said on Monday.

The company is now studying green hydrogen opportunities, particularly in Egypt given the framework agreement signed during the COP27 climate conference last year, Sumant Sinha told Reuters in Davos at the World Economic Forum.

“We have not taken any investment decisions at this point in time but we are doing development work to find if we can get to that point,” Sinha stated.

Under the framework agreement, the plant would be located around 200 kilometres south of Cairo and the green hydrogen would be shipped through the Suez Canal.

“The power will get shipped from wherever it is produced through lines constructed by the Egyptian government to the Suez Canal Economic Zone and then we would convert it to ammonia if required, put it on a ship and send it out via Suez Canal either to the European side or Asian side depending on where the demand is,” he further said.

A final investment decision on the project is due within 18 months from the signing of the framework agreement.

“India has very good natural resources also and we can ship out of India just like we can out of Egypt.” Sinha added.

ReNew Power, a unit of New York-listed ReNew Energy Global Plc, currently generates nearly 1.8 percent of India’s total electricity annually and has a total capacity of 13 Gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar, including projects in the works.

The company has been funded by investors including Goldman Sachs and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADIA. It has raised more than $6.5 billion of capital, both equity and debt.

India, one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, is seeking to boost its renewable energy generation to 500 GW by 2030 from a current output of about 120 GW, according to government data.

Of that, about 180 GW have already been auctioned for solar and wind power projects.

Sinha said that ReNew Power’s market share of new bids is around 12 percent.

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