Adani Green withdraws from controversial renewable energy project in Sri Lanka

The Adani Group is going ahead with the construction of the West Container Terminal at the Colombo port, along with the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) and conglomerate John Keells Holdings. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Adani Green on Wednesday (February 12, 2025) withdrew from a controversial renewable energy project in northern Sri Lanka, amid persisting controversy and a legal battle over its approval and potential environmental impact.

Also read: Under the scanner: Adani’s project in Sri Lanka | Explained

The move signals a significant retreat for the Adani Group from its investment outreach in India’s neighbourhood, in the wake of local scrutiny and criticism. The company’s withdrawal also amounts to a win for Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who vowed to cancel the “corrupt” project before being elected to the country’s top office in September 2024, although his government later expressed willingness to renegotiate it.

In a letter dated February 12, 2025, Adani Green said following the Government of Sri Lanka’s recent appointment of a committee to renegotiate the project, it decided to “respectfully withdraw from the said project”, while “fully respecting” the sovereign rights of Sri Lanka and its choices. Citing “protracted discussions” with the Ceylon Electricity Board for over two years, on the 484 MW renewable energy wind farms in the northern towns of Mannar and Pooneryn in Sri Lanka, the company said it the “build-own-operate” project had envisaged a total of investment of nearly $ 1 billion.

Meanwhile, the Adani Group is going ahead with the construction of the West Container Terminal at the Colombo port, along with the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) and conglomerate John Keells Holdings.

Adani Green’s wind farm project in northern Sri Lanka has remained under the scanner from the time it was approved by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration in 2022, without a competitive tender process. The Ranil Wickremesinghe administration, too, took the project ahead, despite serious concerns raised by opposition — over the company’s “backdoor entry” into Sri Lanka’s energy sector, as well as Mannar residents and activists, who flagged potential damage to a key bird corridor, among other environmental risks, and moved the Supreme Court.