The 45th Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries unveiled the ‘New Energy business’ as it aims to boost its solar energy capacity. As per plans, 20 GW of solar energy generation capacity will be built by 2025 “to help India become a net exporter of energy and emerge as a credible alternative to China in New Energy manufacturing”.
Reliance plans to set up four Giga Factories for Power Electronics. They will pertain to photovoltaic panels, energy storage, Green Hydrogen, and fuel cell system. These will add to the establishment of a fully integrated New Energy manufacturing ecosystem in Jamnagar. An investment sum of Rs 75,000 crore has been assigned for the same.
It is noteworthy that the company aims to significantly enhance its building capabilities in designing and manufacturing power electronics and software systems that will integrate with their telecommunications, cloud computing and the IoT platform.
Chairman & Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said, “Once proven at scale, we are prepared to double the investment to scale up our manufacturing ecosystem.” It must be noted that the last AGM saw a major announcement to facilitate 100 GW of solar energy by 2030 and the establishment of the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar.
The Director of CEEW Centre for Energy Finance, Gagan Sidhu told reporters, “It is good to realise that Reliance is making a play at each of the three sub-transitions (power sector transition, mobility transition and green hydrogen transition) that constitute the broad energy transition in India.” He opined that the three sub-transitions which account for around 70 per cent of the emissions, will help in achieving the net-zero target.
Reliance also plans to transition from Grey Hydrogen to Green Hydrogen by 2025. As the demand for intermittent energy for Green Hydrogen increases, its solar energy capabilities will help in this endeavour as well.
