India's Adani Group to open $230m academy with focus on next gen green skills

India's green energy giant Adani Group has partnered with Singapore’s ITE Education Services (ITEES) to build a skills talent pipeline for the energy sector in India, donating over ₹2,000 crore (€220.8 million; $230.2 million) to establish internationally benchmarked schools of excellence.

The schools, says Adani in a release, will serve the needs of industries including green energy, manufacturing, hi-tech, project excellence and industrial design.

Each of these schools, called Adani Global Skills Academy, will select students from technical and vocational education backgrounds in India aligned to their industry and role aspiration.

Once these students have been certified in their chosen field of study, they will be provided employment within the Adani Group, as well as the broader industry, depending on their role and field of training.

In its initial phase, the programme will prioritise establishing the world’s largest finishing school for technical training in Mundra, Gujarat, aiming to skill over 25,000 learners annually for a wide range of industry and service roles.

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These learners would be fresh graduates and diploma holders with vocational and technical qualifications from ITIs or Polytechnics, and would be selected for an intensive bootcamp experience within the schools.

According to Adani, the Academy will be the largest of its kind globally and will come equipped with innovation centres and AI-based simulators combined with mixed reality based learning, within a fully residential facility for students and faculty.

On the Academy Adani is partnering with ITEES Singapore, a career oriented technical and vocational training services and a key developer of national occupational skills certification and standards. ITEES Singapore forms part of the country’s Institute of Technology (ITE), established by the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) as a post-secondary institution in 1992.

ITEES Singapore will serve as a knowledge partner to create a continuous feeder for this technically qualified and industry-ready talent.

Commenting in a release was Robin Bhowmik, CEO of Adani Skills & Education: “This partnership is critical to our initiative as a Group to build high-level technical talent and is in line with our commitment towards the Make-in-India focus across our portfolio.

“With deep engagement across academic quality assurance, certification-led learning pathways, faculty and student exchange programs and leadership development, this partnership will embed the best of application-led learning to support industries across sectors…”

India’s green skills

Green energy forms one of the core focuses of the new academy. In India, as it is globally, ensuring a workforce fit for purpose for the energy transition continues to be a concern.

According to the World Bank in a blog post, their research has found that only 5.9% of India’s jobs are green, while 4.6% fall into the carbon-intensive category.

This leaves a sweeping 89.5% of jobs outside both categories, underscoring the country’s challenge of transitioning to a greener economy.

A World Bank study, Characterizing Green and Carbon-intensive Employment in India, finds that the distribution of green and carbon-intensive jobs in India varies widely. Green jobs are concentrated in wealthier states, with higher per-capita income, indicating a faster green transition.

Moving forward, says the World Bank, one of the key policy areas for the country will need to be a focus on strengthening both formal education and lifelong learning systems to equip India’s current and future workforce with the skills needed for a successful green transition.