The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has announced its plans to set up a renewable joint venture (JV) company with NTPC Limited, and it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to officiate the arrangement.

According to the MoU, ONGC and NTPC Limited intend to explore and set up offshore wind projects, among other renewable power assets in India and abroad. They also plan to delve into the fields of sustainability, storage, e-mobility, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliant projects. The company said that the MoU would help both companies achieve their targets in the renewable energy business.

The ONGC is an Indian multinational crude oil and gas corporation, a state-owned enterprise under the administrative control of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

ONGC said it has a portfolio of 176 MW of renewable projects, of which 153 MW capacity is of wind projects, and 23 MW is solar. It also added that NTPC has an operational renewable generation capacity of 920 MW, with about 2.3 GW of projects under construction and a goal to achieve 32 GW by 2032.

This is not the first joint venture for NTPC. Last year, NTPC and East Delhi Municipal Corporation came together for a joint venture company to harness municipal waste into green energy. As per the terms and conditions of the proposed JV, NTPC and EDMC were slated to have a 74:26 equity involvement, respectively. The JV aimed to develop and operate a state-of-the-art integrated waste management and energy generation facility.

Previously, the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL) also signed an agreement to form a joint venture with NTPC. The joint venture, called the National Electricity Distribution Company Limited, was set to be the first country-wide public sector power distribution company. The equity ratio was set at 50:50 between the two companies. The decision to float a new public sector distribution company with a pan-India presence came in the wake of several state-owned DISCOMs being financially stressed, and the central Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) program not yielding the desired results.