A coal billionaire is building the world’s biggest clean energy plant and it’s five times the size of Paris

The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can’t keep up.

Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world’s biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland. The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can’t keep up. “I don’t even do the math any more,” Sagar Adani told CNN in an interview last week. Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He’s also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia’s second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India’s biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements. Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion. It will be the world’s biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes. The success of the Khavda Renewable Energy Park is critical to India’s efforts to reduce pollution and hit its climate goals while meeting the burgeoning energy needs of the world’s most populous nation and fastest-growing major economy. Coal still accounts for 70% of the electricity India generates.