GAIL India To Invest Rs 6,000 Crore In RE Projects For 1 GW

State-owned Gail India is going to invest Rs 6,000 crore on renewable energy projects in the next three years. And if required, the investment can go up by an additional Rs 20,000 crore by 2030, according to GAIL India CMD Manoj Jain.

Although the plan is to commission 1 GW power from renewable energy within the next three years, Jain said it is looking at almost 3 GW of renewables capacity by 2030. The company is undertaking a green hydrogen capacity addition right now and the progress done on the prototype will influence its overall investments, and a call on the same will be taken after 18 months.

In FY22, GAIL India invested Rs 7,700 crore across all activities, which included pipelines for the core transmission business and petrochemicals, he added.

As reported earlier, GAIL Limited has awarded a contract to set up one of the largest Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) Electrolyser to produce 4.3 MT Hydrogen a day in India. In tandem with the National Hydrogen Mission, the renewable energy-powered project would be installed in Guna, Madhya Pradesh. So designed as to produce around 4.3 Metric Tons of Hydrogen per day (10 MW capacity) with a purity of about 99.999 Volume %, the project is scheduled to be commissioned by November 2023, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas on May 12. We understand power to run the electrolyser would come from a solar installation locally.

GAIL India Director (Finance) Rakesh Kumar Jain said the company, which reported a 112 per cent jump in FY22 post-tax net profit at Rs 10,364 crore, has outlined an overall capital expenditure plan of up to Rs 40,000 crore in the next five years, which will cover a wide array of areas. This will entail borrowings of up to Rs 20,000 crore, while the rest will come from internal accruals, the director added.