ITC Commissions First Offsite Solar Plant in Tamil Nadu

Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC Limited has commissioned its first offsite solar plant in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu. The 14.9 MW solar plant, built at an investment of Rs 76 crores, will help reduce CO2 emissions over the course of its lifetime, said the Rs 45,485 crore revenue (FY21) company.

The plant has already helped ITC meet 90% of its electricity requirement from renewable sources in the state, the firm added.

As a part of ITC Chairman Sanjiv Puri’s ‘Sustainability 2.0’ Vision, the company plans to meet 100 percent of the entire grid electricity requirements from renewable sources by 2030.

Spread over fifty-nine acres, the solar plant in Tamil Nadu is expected to generate over twenty-two million units of renewable energy annually for ITC’s hotels, food manufacturing plants, paper manufacturing facility, and printing and packaging factories in the state.

Commenting on this new project, Sanjiv Rangrass, Group Head – ITC Life Sciences & Technology, Central Projects, EHS & Quality Assurance, ITC Ltd., stated, “At ITC, we have relentlessly pursued a mission for environmental stewardship through a gamut of large scale endeavours that comprehensively address the threat of climate change. Our large-scale investments in renewable energy assets are an integral part of our low carbon strategy aimed at making a meaningful contribution to a net zero economy.”

ITC’s renewable portfolio comprises 138 MW of wind power plants and 14 MW of solar plants, with 53 MW of additional solar capacity under execution. Currently, projects are also underway in other sources of renewable energy like biomass boilers. The company claims to have made investments of over Rs. 1000 crores in renewable energy assets to date.

ITC further states that renewable energy powers twenty factories, nine hotels, and six office buildings of the company in Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, and Punjab. In 2018, ITC became the first private sector entity to wheel renewable energy across states through the Inter-State Open Access mechanism.

For its size and resources, and considering its high engagement with the agricultural sector, there are high hopes that ITC, like many other corporates, will reassess and target an earlier date for going completely green, as far as its energy requirements go. We believe there is a strong case for the firm to maintain its leadership by targeting 2025 in fact.