Situated in the middle of miles of desolate land bordering Pakistan, a narrow airstrip with no air traffic controller to direct arriving planes and only a makeshift office in a container for restrooms is an unlikely entryway to the largest renewable energy park in the world.
The airstrip was much smaller in December 2022 when Gautam Adani, the head of the Adani group and the second richest man in the world at the time, arrived at the desolate region—which lacked a pincode and took its name from a village 80 kilometers away—using a small aircraft.

The land hardly had any vegetation due to its highly saline soil, leave alone any habitation. But the area with second best solar radiation in the country after Ladakh and wind speeds five times of plains, served as an idle location for a renewable energy park.

An 18-km drive from the airstrip through dusty arid land is the site for his group’s Khavda renewable energy park spread over 538 square kilometers – roughly five times the size of Paris.

When Mr Adani first landed at Khavda, he joked if anyone could even find a mosquito in the area, his executives said.

But since then, his group has not just laid solar panels that will convert sun rays into electricity and wind mills to harness wind blowing at the speed of 8 meters per second, but also built colonies for workers, put up desalination plants to make saline water pumped out of 700 meters below ground portable and utilities such as mobile phone repair shops.

Adani Green Energy Ltd, India’s largest renewable energy company, will invest about ₹ 1.5 lakh crore to generate 30 megawatts of clean electricity at Khavda in Gujarat’s Kutch, it’s Managing Director Vneet Jaain said.

“We have just now commissioned 2,000 MW (2 GW) of capacity at Khavda and plan to add 4 GW in the current fiscal (financial year ending March 2025) and 5 GW every year thereafter,” he said.

The airstrip is used to ferry group executives from Mundra or Ahmedabad a few times a week.

Air traffic controller or ATC at Bhuj, some 160-km away, is the last guide post for airplanes going to Khavda. But it’s reach is only till ‘Tent City’ and pilots are virtually on their own for the last leg of 80-km or so including landing.

“We use visual aids and airplanes’ navigation systems to land. When taking off, we convey to Bhuj about the plans over phone,” a pilot flying the Adani Group-owned plane said.

The outer flange of the energy park is just one km from the international border with Pakistan. The one-km buffer is manned by BSF.

Executives said the airstrip was built in just 35 days in an area where even tractors had to be modified so they could operate in land that doesn’t easily absorb water.

The area has its own set of challenges – heavy dust storms during March to June, no communication and transport infrastructure, nearest habitable area being 80-km away, water not seeping under soil during rainy season, even ground water being saline and it being a restricted zone.

Executives said while some workers from Khavda village, accommodation are being built to house 8,000 workers.

Adani group’s renewable energy plans are the most ambitious by any corporate in the country which is targeting to generate 500 GW of electricity from non-fossil sources by 2030, as part of a broader plan of achieving net-zero emissions by 2070.

Khavda at its peak will generate 81 billion units that can power entire nations such as Belgium, Chile and Switzerland, they said.

According to Mr. Jaain, the 30 GW of energy planned at Khavda would be made up of 4 GW of wind and 26 GW of solar power.

The current operational portfolio of AGEL consists of 2,140 MW of wind-solar hybrid capacity, 1,401 MW of wind, and 7,393 MW of solar capacity.

The Khavda region has one of India’s best wind resources, with speeds of up to 8 meters per second, and high solar irradiation of 2,060 kWh/m2. However, frequent sandstorms make it necessary to clean solar panels multiple times a day.

According to executives, waterless robotic module cleaning systems will cover the entire project. The government owns the land in Khavda and has leased it to the Adani group for a 40-year period.

Executives stated that before beginning development of this site, Adani Green carried out a number of studies over the previous five years, including geotechnical investigations, seismic studies, a centrifuge study by Cambridge, resource assessments and land studies, Environment and Social Impact Assessments (ESIA), Environmental and Social Due Diligence (ESDD), and a thorough feasibility study.

In 2022, construction got underway. A total of 180 km of optical fiber cables were laid for connectivity as part of the extensive infrastructure development project, which also included the building of concrete batching plants, 50 km of drainage, 100 km of roads, and three reverse osmosis (RO) plants with a combined capacity of 70 cubic meters per hour to meet the project staff’s drinking water needs.

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