WEF 2023: ReNew Power explores green hydro project in India, Egypt

India's ReNew Power, a unit of New York-listed ReNew Energy Global Plc is studying opportunities to expand into green hydrogen in India, Egypt and elsewhere, its chairman and CEO said on Monday.

The firm, which now generates nearly 1.8% of India's total electricity annually, has a total capacity of 13 Gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar, including projects in the works.

ReNew Power is now studying green hydrogen opportunities, specifically in Egypt, having signed a framework agreement 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 said.

The plant would be located around 200 kilometres south of the capital 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 said.

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

India, one of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, wants 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, around 180 GW have already been auctioned for solar and wind power projects.

ReNew Power's market share of new bids is around 12%, Sinha said.

India also has plans to produce 5 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030, which ReNew Power wants to be a part of.

India is the world's third largest power market with demand growing at around 6% a year.

"India has very good natural resources also and we can ship out of India just like we can out of Egypt."

Financing clean tech

ReNew Power, which has been funded by investors including Goldman Sachs and Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund ADIA, has raised more than $6.5 billion of capital, both equity and debt.

Sinha said while financing was easy for his clean tech firm, with India being a big market where corporates are "relatively sophisticated", it has been harder for other countries, particularly in Africa which need access to global debt markets.

Sinha said that a weaker global economic outlook could also mean cheaper input costs and falling interest rates, translating into a better climate for clean tech companies.

"One of the big reasons why there is so much volatility in the capital markets especially for clean tech stocks is because interest rates are going up," he said.