Inside Mukesh Ambani’s game plan for RIL’s new energy business

Addressing India’s Energy Trilemma (affordability, sustainability and security of energy), Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said he believe the company is uniquely positioned to offer a practical solution to the serious problems facing the country. Reliance’s New Energy and New Materials business squarely addresses this trilemma as the company has been investing and developing various aspects of green energy.

Speaking at the Annual General Meeting, Ambani explained: “With the climate crisis looming large, the world is going through a multi-decadal era of transformation from fossil fuels to green energy. This transformation requires significant investments in skills and capabilities, technology and innovation, as well as in building large-scale manufacturing ecosystems. All this provides strong tailwinds to our New Materials and New Energy businesses.” The next few years are going to be transformational for Reliance as it positions India to be a world leader and trendsetter in energy transition. For this, it will deploy the committed capital of Rs 75,000 crore to build new energy manufacturing ecosystem, which will enable the company to accelerate giga-scale production for round-the-clock power and for large-scale green hydrogen production for green chemicals manufacturing, as well as for green mobility.

Giga factory

Stating that the company is focused on fast-track execution of our Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Manufacturing Complex at Jamnagar, Ambani added that the first priority is to deliver a fully integrated, end-to-end solar PV manufacturing ecosystem. “This will be one of the largest, most technologically advanced, flexible, and most cost-competitive solar giga factory globally, and we will be converting sand into solar PV modules. Our solar giga factory will include manufacturing of PV Modules, Cells, Wafers and Ingots, Polysilicon, and Glass at a single location in Jamnagar. We will target to bring the factory on-stream in a phased manner by the end 2025,” added Ambani.

 Ambani also plans to deploy leading-edge Heterojunction technology for manufacturing one of the highest efficiency solar PV cells and modules globally, for utility scale and rooftop power generation.

Wind Power Generation

Reliance’s New Energy business also intends to pursue wind power generation. For this, the company is making made significant progress in developing a manufacturing ecosystem critical to achieving cost-efficient wind power generation at giga scale.

“One of the significant cost drivers in the manufacturing of wind blades is carbon fibre. Our foray into manufacturing carbon fibre at large scale provides us with a unique advantage to further integrate and reduce cost of wind turbines. In addition, we will be partnering with the world’s leading technology players in wind equipment manufacturing to deliver most cost-efficient solutions,” added Ambani.

The company will further leverage engineering and construction capabilities, along with giga-scale manufacturing ecosystem, to accelerate and enable installation of at least 100 GW of renewable energy generation by 2030.

Reliance also intends to set up battery a giga factory by 2026, which will manufacture battery chemicals, cells and packs, leading all the way up to containerised energy storage solutions, and will include a battery recycling facility to deliver a truly integrated ecosystem.

Simultaneously, the company is focused on fast-track commercialisation of sodium ion battery technology to build on technology leadership position by industrialising sodium ion cell production at megawatt level by 2025, and rapidly scale up to giga scale thereafter.

As integration of energy storage with wind and solar power generation is critical to provide grid-connected, round-the-clock electricity, the company is on the way to prove this integration at mega-watt scale in the next few quarters at Jamnagar. This will be followed by grid-scale deployment of batteries to convert intermittently captured photons into electrons and make them available round the clock for our captive requirements, as well as for India’s growing energy needs.

Green Hydrogen 

Progress has been made on Green Hydrogen as well. During the last year’s AGM, the company was still working on two critical components for delivering most cost competitive Green Hydrogen and its derivatives – cost of renewable power generation, and installed cost of electrolyser for giga-scale deployment. Finally, the company has a roadmap towards achieving our targeted cost of electrolysers, and in turn, Green Hydrogen.

“In collaboration with our technology partners, we are firmly on our way to successfully demonstrate this first at MW scale. We will leverage our engineering capabilities, large-scale manufacturing, and localization to optimize this at giga scale. In parallel, we will set up a fully integrated, automated giga-scale electrolyser manufacturing facility. This will enable us to establish large-scale Green Hydrogen production at Jamnagar, gradually transition our captive requirements, and simultaneously integrate with Green Ammonia and Green Methanol production for domestic and international markets.”

To progress this roadmap, Reliance New Energy will onboard rich talent pool of several thousand scientists, engineers, and innovators, drawn from countries around the world.