Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who has made his fortune in coal, ports, and green energy, became Asia's richest person on Monday, moving ahead of another Indian mogul, Mukesh Ambani, in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Adani's total net worth as of early February 8 stood at $88.5 billion, ahead of Ambani's $87.9-billion net worth, the index showed. Apart from being the richest person in Asia, Adani is now the tenth richest person in the world.
Adani has added $12 billion to its net worth year to date, which also makes him the billionaire with the largest jump in their fortune so far this year.
Some of the public companies controlled by the Adani Group have surged on the stock market by over 600 percent in the past two years, also thanks to the group's continued expansion into renewable energy, Bloomberg notes.
At the end of last year, the Adani Group said it planned to invest $70 billion by 2030 in its green energy operations to become the largest producer of renewable energy in the world.
Adani Group controls Adani Green Energy Limited, which is the world's largest solar developer. Last year, French supermajor TotalEnergies bought a 20-percent minority interest in Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) from Adani Group.
Adani's fellow Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani has also recently announced major investments in renewable energy for his oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries.
The group said last month that it would invest as much as $76 billion in green energy projects in India over the next 15 years. Reliance Industries already announced last year a commitment to invest more than $10 billion in three years in a new business unit that would build solar module, battery storage, electrolyzer, and fuel cell factories. Reliance Industries, the largest company in India, plans to invest $68 billion (5 trillion rupees) over the next 15 years in the state of Gujarat to set up renewable and hydrogen projects of a total of 100 gigawatts (GW). Another $8.1 billion (600 billion rupees) will be invested in the manufacturing of polysilicon, wafers, cells, solar PV modules, electrolyzers, energy-storage batteries, and fuel cells.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More