'ENGIE pursuing organic growth in building India renewables portfolio'

CATHERINE MACGREGOR, group chief executive officer and board member of French utility company ENGIE, spoke to S DINAKAR in New Delhi on energy transition and the firm's plans for India and the world. India contributes around 25 per cent to ENGIE's global renewable development portfolio on an annual basis between 2022 and 2025 and then 20 per cent per year from 2026 to 2030. MacGregor, an engineer by training from the elite Ecole Centrale of Paris who spent 23 years at oil field services company Schlumberger, declined to comment on actual investments into India. But based on the country's contribution to ENGIE's global renewable portfolio, India is expected to have a fair share of the ₹22-25 billion in investments the firm has planned over a three-year period between 2023 and 2025. Edited excerpts:

How do you stress the importance of renewables and green hydrogen/biomethane in decarbonisation, both for India and the world?

Obviously, you have to decarbonise, but you also have to ensure security of supply and affordability. That sounds simple, but it's quite difficult to achieve. ENGIE is very engaged in developing renewables, but also in what we call flexible assets, which are crucial complements to renewable energy. This includes energy storage solutions, such as batteries, where ENGIE has taken a pioneering position in some key countries.

We have a strong ambition to be net-zero by 2045, which serves as our guiding compass. To support this, we've allocated between ₹22 and ₹25 billion in growth capex over the current three-year period (2022-2025).

Does much of your equipment for decarbonisation efforts come from China?

Some of it does, but we also source from Southeast Asia, the US, and increasingly, India. We aim to diversify our sourcing.

There's a trend toward localising the supply chain, especially with mandates like "Buy American" or "Make in India". Some developers are entering the manufacturing space. Do you see ENGIE following suit? Manufacturing is not ENGIE's competency. We prefer to remain supplier-agnostic and choose the best technology for each project.

We don't see local manufacturing as a direction we need to pursue.