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REC, a public sector lender, has sanctioned about ₹6,000 crore loan to renewable energy company ACME Ltd for its green hydrogen project in Oman. But the rupee loan facility, sourced at a rate of about 8-9 per cent, would be converted to a US-dollar-denominated facility once REC sets up a subsidiary in the GIFT City in Gujarat, ACME’s Group Vice President Shashi Shekhar, has told businessline.
GIFT City is a business district and a special economic zone. A bank can set up a business unit in the International Financial Service Centre at the GIFT City. According to norms, the unit will be treated as an offshore banking unit of the financial institution.
According to a statement issued by ACME on Friday, the group signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with REC for loans of over ₹21,000 crore to set up various power, green ammonia and pumped hydro projects.
“The group signed the MoU with REC amounting to more than ₹21,000 crore of loans for setting up a 380 MW round the clock renewable power project, phase one of Odisha and phase one of Tamil Nadu green ammonia projects and 600 MWh of pumped hydro projects,” the company said.
Tamil Nadu project
“For the green hydrogen project in Tamil Nadu, ACME has bought 234 acres of land from the Tuticorin Port Trust,” Shashi Shekhar said. The company would need 30,000 acres of land to set up a 5,000 MW solar farm and to generate clean energy for making green hydrogen.
In view of the difficulty in obtaining such a huge parcel of land in Tamil Nadu, ACME is planning to put up the solar project in Gujarat and wheel the power to Tamil Nadu for the green hydrogen project, he added.
Big plans
ACME’s website says that it has 5,000GW of operating capacity and another 10,000MW under construction.
In June 2022, ACME signed a MoU with the Karnataka government to invest ₹52,000 crore in green hydrogen manufacturing in the State. In July 2022, it signed up (for an incentive package) with the Government of Tamil Nadu for investing another ₹52,474 crore in the State. The Tamil Nadu project includes a 5,000 MW solar project and production of 1.1 million tons of green ammonia using 1.5GW of electrolyser capacity. It has plans to invest in Odisha and Oman.
When asked about such massive investment plans, Shashi Shekhar said that funding would not be a problem.
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