ITC invests Rs 76 crore to set up a first offsite solar plant in Tamil Nadu

ITC Limited, one of India's leading multi-business conglomerates and an acknowledged exemplar in sustainability, 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 throughout its lifetime. The plant has already helped ITC achieve the rare feat of meeting 90% of its electricity requirement from renewable sources in Tamil Nadu.

This new project aligns with ITC Chairman Sanjiv Puri's 'Sustainability 2.0' Vision, a comprehensive goal-based agenda that raises the bar for sustainability performance. This bold Vision calls for inclusive strategies that can support even more livelihoods, pursue newer pathways to fight climate change, support circular economy and enable the transition to a net-zero ecosystem. As a part of this Vision, ITC plans to meet 100 percent of the entire grid electricity requirements from renewable sources by 2030 and contribute meaningfully to combat the threat of climate change.

Spread over a sprawling fifty-nine acres, the solar plant in Tamil Nadu is built with the latest solar technology. It complies with all national and international standards on design and safety. The unit will generate over twenty-two million renewable energy units annually for ITC's hotels, food manufacturing plants, paper manufacturing facility, and printing and packaging factories in Tamil Nadu.

Commenting on this new project, Sanjiv Rangrass, group head - ITC Life Sciences & Technology, Central Projects, EHS & Quality Assurance, ITC, stated, "At ITC, we have relentlessly pursued a mission for environmental stewardship through a gamut of large scale endeavors 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 53MW of additional solar capacity under execution. The company has made investments of over Rs 1000 crore in renewable energy assets to date. Currently, projects are also underway in other renewable energy sources like biomass boilers.

Renewable energy powers twenty factories, nine hotels, and six office buildings of ITC 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. ITC's 46MW Wind power plant in Andhra Pradesh supplies power to over 15 ITC establishments in 8 states. This has led to a higher renewable energy utilization for the company.

Besides investing in new renewable energy assets, ITC, as part of its Sustainability 2.0 agenda aims to achieve a 50% reduction in specific emissions and a 30% reduction in specific energy consumption by 2030 over a 2014-15 baseline. Such efforts in decarbonizing energy consumption through low-carbon energy solutions will be met through large-scale digitalization and R&D initiatives, cross-sectoral collaborations, and partnerships.

ITC is an exemplar in environment stewardship. The company was recently rated at the 'Leadership Level' with 'A-' scores for both Climate Change and Water Security by CDP, one of the most reputed independent global platforms for disclosures on environmental impacts.