India's oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries plans to invest more than US$10 billion in three years in a new business unit that will build solar module, battery storage, electrolyser, and fuel cell factories, chairman Mukesh Ambani told the group's annual general meeting on Thursday.
Reliance Industries is the most valuable company in India and has diversified operations, including oil refining. Reliance Industries owns the biggest refinery in India and the biggest refining hub in the world, Jamnagar. The refinery has a crude oil processing capacity of 1.24 million barrels per day, while Reliance Industries is also invested in oil exploration and production, petrochemicals, textiles, telecoms, and retail.
As part of a drive to be part of India-made energy transition solutions, Reliance will now create a renewables division in which it will invest US$10.1 billion (750 billion Indian rupees) in three years, Ambani said today.
Reliance plans to build the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar. This, Ambani said, will be one of the world's largest such integrated renewable energy manufacturing facilities.
Reliance will establish and enable at least 100 GW of solar energy capacity by 2030, including a large part from rooftop solar for decentralized solar installations in rural India, Ambani-Asia's richest entrepreneur-said.
Reliance will build four gigafactories-one for integrated solar photovoltaic modules, an energy storage battery factory, an electrolyser factory for green hydrogen production, and a fuel cell factory for converting hydrogen into power.
"We will transform our legacy business into sustainable, circular and net zero carbon materials business. One that will provide growing returns over several decades. And we will do this by repurposing our existing assets to extend their economic life and earning capacity," Ambani said.
"Our world has only one option: rapid transition to a new era of green, clean and renewable energy," he added.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More