Brookfield and Reliance Industries to manufacture clean energy equipment in Australia

Leading global asset management company, Brookfield Asset Management has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with India's largest private sector company, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to explore opportunities to manufacture renewable energy and decarbonization equipment in Australia.

According to the announcement made by Reliance Industries today, the MoU aims to both accelerate and de-risk Australia's energy transition by enabling it to locally produce clean energy equipment such as PV modules, long-duration battery storage and components for wind energy. Brookfiled will work with Reliance to explore avenues of direct capital investment and development of skills, knowledge, and expertise in the renewable energy sector of Australia.

"We want to help kickstart a new era in local manufacturing that will benefit domestic renewables developers, including Origin Energy Markets, and many communities around Australia," said Luke Edwards, Brookfield Renewable Head of Australia.

"We are establishing these types of global partnerships in manufacturing now to allow us to get started as quickly as possible given the ever-reducing timeline for Australia to reach its first emissions-reductions targets in 2030."

Earlier this year in March, Brookfield signed a binding agreement with EIG to acquire Origin Energy. As part of its proposed acquisition of the Origin Energy Markets division, Brookfield along with its institutional partners and global institutional investors GIC and Temasek have set out a plan to invest between A$20 billion and A$30 billion over the next 10 years to accelerate its energy transition. The MoU with Reliance intends to support this investment to ensure consistent and adequate supply of the clean energy equipment required to develop up to 14 GW of new, large-scale generation and storage capacity in Australia.

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"We are confident that Reliance and Brookfield will explore avenues in green energy in Australia, accelerating the nation's transition to a Net Zero future and providing a fillip to the global green energy movement," said Anant Ambani, Director, Reliance New Energy Limited.

"Brookfield is uniquely placed to support these manufacturing initiatives given its track record in committing long-term capital to enable the energy transition, and its innovative approach to largescale investments in re-shoring of essential and strategic manufacturing processes and supply chains such as its investment in the US$30 billion Intel Chip plant in Nevada."

According to the Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan released by the Australian Government, the country aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, through a 'technology-led approach' which includes a Technology Investment Roadmap and its Low Emissions Technology Statements. Further, Australia is set to invest AUD 20 billion in low-carbon power over the next decade (under the Technology Investment Roadmap), hoping to unlock AUD 80 billion of private and public investment on green technologies (International Energy Agency (IEA).