For years, nothing could stop the massive coal-fired power plant from rising over paddies and palm groves here in eastern India. The tale of Gautam Adani's giant power plant reveals how political will in Modi's India bends in favor of the dirty fuel.
GODDA, India — For years, nothing could stop the massive coal-fired power plant from rising over paddies and palm groves here in eastern India.
When his companies’ stock peaked in September, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranked Adani as the second-richest person on the planet, behind Elon Musk.For decades, Indian officials have rebuffed Western pleas to phase out coal, a reliable but dirty energy source that produces one-fifth of all planet-warming carbon emissions.
reveal how Indian officials repeatedly facilitated a project that seemed to make little economic sense. at least $1 billion. That came even as Modi told the United Nations he would tax coal and ramp up renewable energy. That was before villagers found out about the project and rallied against it, before hundreds of police officers charged at protesters with batons and jailed their leader, before Chinese engineers arrived by the busload and a hulking plant replaced what used to be fields of rice and chickpeas.
All told, Bangladesh would buy Adani’s electricity at more than five times the market price of bulk electricity in the country, according to Buckley, a longtime energy analyst at major financial firms who focuses, in part, on South Asian markets.
“She knows what is bad and what is good,” he said. “But she knows, ‘If I satisfy Adani, Modi will be happy.’ Bangladesh now is not even a state of India. It is below that.” Adani’s reach now extends far beyond coal. He is India’s largest seller of consumer packaged goods and operates its largest urban natural gas provider. He has entered cutting-edge sectors, such as drone manufacturing, data centers and hydrogen fuel — a frontier technology in— shortly after they were highlighted in government development plans. To many, he is seen almost as an arm of state policy.
One was an ambitious politician, known for his austere lifestyle and religious devotion. The other was a low-key, workaholic industrialist who traveled without large retinues and obsessed over cutting costs. “As Europe has shown, the stark reality is that replacing fossil fuels is not easy,” he said. “While corporates like us work towards making green energy affordable, equal importance must be placed on making a graduated transition away from fossil fuels so that the hopes and aspirations of our people are not abandoned, literally, in the dark.”
“This must move urgently,” Das instructed his aides, according to the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “Anything that needs to be done, just do it.” The new committee was inundated by letters from villagers in Godda worrying about pollution and arguing against the project. But Environment Ministry officials pushed back, saying the plant also had local supporters, Lele said.By early 2018, Adani had received the necessary permits, but there was one more hurdle: potential tax bills on coal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Prabhu, the former commerce minister, and Das, the former Jharkhand state leader, declined to comment through their personal secretaries. The office of Tanmay Kumar, the Environment Ministry official overseeing power projects, also declined to comment.In May 2014, fresh off national elections, a triumphant Modi waved from the tarmac in Gujarat, then flew to New Delhi to be sworn in.
“Part of the reason the government wants to keep the coal option is because there are very rich people who own coal assets, and they want to wring the last rupee out of those assets,” said Eswaran Somanathan, an economist at the Indian Statistical Institute. Nair was not detained, but he called the arrest warrant an attempt at intimidation. Nair, who has published articles about Adani’s coal mines and offshore investors, said company executives have invited him to meet and told him that Adani was “a powerful man.”When Adani representatives came to Godda in 2015, they, too, opened with friendly offers, villagers said.
Environmentalists told the crowds the plant would burn 18,000 tons of coal a day and draw 36 million cubic liters of water a year. They spoke of how the 900-foot-tall smokestack would belch pollution as far as eight miles and how that might affect crops and, ultimately, the climate, said Sahu, who can still rattle off the statistics.
“The local officials and police were instruments used by the government,” Yadav said. “If you could build consensus for a project, why would you need to ram it through?”
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