PremiumReliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to set up Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar, Gujarat, to create and offer a fully integrated, end-to-end renewables energy eco-system, Mukesh Ambani, company's chairman and managing director said at RIL's annual general meeting.
"Now, in 2021, we are launching our new energy business with the aim of bridging the green energy divide in India and globally," Ambani said. Over the next three years, RIL will invest over ₹75,000 crore in these initiatives.
"Reliance will establish and enable at least 100GW of solar energy by 2030. A significant part of this will come from rooftop solar and decentralized solar installations in villages. These will bring enormous benefits and prosperity to rural India," Ambani said.
Solar energy is available only during the day, while power is needed round the clock. Therefore, storage is an important piece of the puzzle to solve. For this, RIL will launch its second initiative — an Advanced Energy Storage Giga Factory.
It is also exploring new and advanced electro-chemical technologies that can be used for such large-scale grid batteries to store the energy that we will create. RIL will also collaborate with global leaders in battery technology to achieve the highest reliability for round-the-clock power availability through a combination of generation, storage, and grid connectivity.
Besides electricity, green hydrogen will be a unique energy vector that can enable deep decarbonization of many sectors such as transportation, industry and power. One of the most common methods of generating green hydrogen is by electrolysis of pure water through electrolysers.
RIL's third initiative will be an electrolyser giga factory to manufacture modular electrolyzers of the highest efficiency and lowest capital cost. These can be used for captive production of green hydrogen for domestic use as well as for global sales.
RIL's fourth initiative will be the fuel cell giga dactory. A fuel cell uses oxygen from the air and hydrogen, to generate electricity. The only emission of this process is non-polluting water vapor. In the new era, fuel cells will progressively replace internal combustion engines.
Fuel cell engines can power automobiles, trucks, and buses. They can also be used in stationary applications for powering data centres, telecom towers, emergency generators, and microgrids, and industrial equipment.
RIL's Jamnagar complex will provide infrastructure and utilities to manufacture ancillary material and equipment needed to support these Giga factories so that all critical materials are available in time.
RIL will invest additional ₹15,000 crore in the value chain, partnerships, and future technologies, including upstream and downstream industries.
"Thus, our overall initial investment from our own internal resources in the New Energy business will be ₹75,000 crore (over $10 billion)in 3 years," Ambani said.
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