TotalEnergies to buy 25% stake in India’s Adani New Industries for hydrogen deal

French energy giant TotalEnergies has agreed to buy a 25% stake in India’s Adani New Industries Limited (ANIL) as part of a deal to form a new project for the production and commercialisation of green hydrogen in the country, the company said on Tuesday.

As per the agreement, TotalEnergies – one of the world's biggest oil and gas producers – will help ANIL target a production of one million metric tons of green hydrogen per year (Mtpa) by 2030, underpinned by around 30 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable power generation capacity, as its first milestone.

In order to control green hydrogen production costs, ANIL will be integrated along the value chain, from the manufacturing of equipment needed to generate renewable power and produce green hydrogen, to the production of green hydrogen itself and its transformation into derivatives, including nitrogenous fertilisers and methanol, both for the domestic market and export, TotalEnergies said in a statement.

The Adani-led enterprise initially aims to produce 1.3 Mtpa of urea derived from green hydrogen for the Indian domestic market as a substitute for current urea imports, and will invest around $5 billion in a 2 GW electrolyser fed by renewable power from a 4 GW solar and wind farm, the company said.

“TotalEnergies’ entry into ANIL is a major milestone in implementing our low carbon hydrogen strategy, where we want not only to decarbonise the hydrogen used in our European refineries by 2030, but also to pioneer the mass production of green hydrogen to meet demand, as the market will take off by the end of this decade,” Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, said in a statement.

“This future production capacity of 1 Mtpa of green hydrogen will be a major step in increasing TotalEnergies’ share of new decarbonised molecules – including biofuels, biogas, hydrogen, and e-fuels – to 25% of its energy production and sales by 2050,” he said.

The investment in ANIL marks another major step in the strategic alliance between TotalEnergies and Adani Group – India’s leading energy and infrastructure platform – whose operations across India include LNG terminals, gas utility business, renewable power generation, and now green hydrogen production.

“The strategic value of the Adani-TotalEnergies relationship is immense at both the business level and the ambition level. In our journey to become the largest green hydrogen player in the world, the partnership with TotalEnergies adds several dimensions that include R&D, market reach and an understanding of the end consumer. This fundamentally allows us to shape market demand,” Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani said in a statement.

“Our confidence in our ability to produce the world’s least expensive electron is what will drive our ability to produce the world’s least expensive green hydrogen. This partnership will open up a number of exciting downstream pathways,” he said.