Oil giant TotalEnergies ices massive green hydrogen plans with Adani after share rout
French group's CEO says 'it's just good sense to pause things' over investment with stricken Indian conglomerate to create 'largest green H2 ecosystem in the world'
TotalEnergies has paused plans for a massive green power and hydrogen spree with Adani, the Indian conglomerate at the centre of a $70bn stock market meltdown.
The French oil and gas giant in 2022 set its sights on helping create “the largest green hydrogen ecosystem in the world” as it said it would take a 25% stake in Adani New Industries (ANI), the unit leading the H2 plans of billionaire Gautam Adani.
But after the Adani Groupsent financial shockwaves around the world last week when it became the target of claims of “brazen fraud”, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne said "It was announced [but] nothing was signed.
"Mr Adani has other things to deal with now, it's just good sense to pause things” until the situation with Adani becomes clearer, he was reported saying.
TotalEnergies has several alliances with Adani spanning its fossil and clean energy operations. ANI's first project was due to be a 2GW electrolyser powered by 4GW of wind and solar at a cost of $5bn
Adani Group saw its listed companies plunge in value after a report from a US research group called Hindenburg ahead of a subsequently scrapped $2.5bn share issue by its Adani Enterprises unit, with extraordinary claims that the conglomerate had engaged in “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”.
Adani Group has hit back at the claims which it described as false and designed to underpin profits from short-selling.
'Double-edged sword'
The fallout from the Adani meltdown has seen questions over potential damage to India’s wider green energy ambitions as investors take fright.
Tim Buckley, director of think-tank Climate Energy Finance, told Recharge: “The expansion by one of the largest investors in energy transition in India is now severely curtailed. But this has a double-edged sword.
“The Adani group is also one of the largest private new fossil fuel project investors in the world, and with almost all of that in India.
“As such, India will need to invest faster in zero emissions domestic clean energy infrastructure, given the largest new coal mine and coal power developer in India is now out of the picture for some time at least.”
Buckley added: “Adani had been crowding out other investors in the Indian grid T&D, renewable manufacturing and wind and solar installation markets, given they always were likely to get early access to more favourable deal flow, limiting other players access and incentive to invest fast in India. So there could well be a very silver lining for India's decarbonisation objectives.”
