Indian coal magnate Gautam Adani goes green

NEW DELHI (AP) — Asia’s richest man, Gautam Adani, made his vast fortune betting on coal as an energy hungry India grew swiftly after liberalizing its economy in the 1990s.

He's now set his sights on becoming the world's biggest renewable energy player, by 2030, adroitly aligning his investments with the government’s own priorities.

As India grapples with climate change, the Adani Group, whose operations also span ports, power, farming and defense manufacturing, plans to invest $70 billion in solar, wind and other green energy projects over the next decade.

Adani, 60, has profited since fellow Gujarati Narendra Modi, India’s most influential prime minister in decades, took office in 2014.

The college drop out from a middle-class family fits the government’s need for “national champions,” both to meet domestic goals and as private sector partners in strategic projects outside India, said Mihir Sharma, an economist at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.

“It isn’t that government policies are shaped by the Adani Group so much as the Adani Group is a willing and able partner in what the government decides are its priorities,” Sharma said.

Since Modi became prime minister in 2014, having at times campaigned using a private jet owned by the tycoon, Adani’s net worth has shot up nearly 2,000% to $125 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. He surpassed Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to briefly become the world’s second richest man in September after a surge in the value of his seven listed entities.

Adani’s businesses have won multibillion dollar contracts to build ports, highways and power plants. The industrialist’s ambitions include developing drones and ammunition, key to the government’s goal of boosting military-related exports to $5...