Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman, Mukesh Ambani has announced that the company will build four giga factories in India.
Speaking at the 44th annual general meeting (AGM) held on June 24, Ambani made several big announcements highlighting Reliance's foray into new energy business aimed at driving rapid transition to a new era of clean, green, and renewable energy.
"Jamnagar [located in Gujarat] was the cradle of our old energy business. Jamnagar will also be the cradle of our new energy and new materials business," Ambani said.
Reliance has started working on developing the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar, he added.
The new facility will be amongst the largest such integrated renewable energy manufacturing facilities in the world, Ambani confirmed.
Speaking of giga factories, he explained, "Reliance will develop four giga factories which will manufacture and fully integrate all the critical components of the new energy ecosystem."
As a part of the plan, Reliance will build: an integrated solar photovoltaic module factory to produce solar energy, an advanced energy storage battery factory for the storage of intermittent energy, an electrolyzer factory to produce green hydrogen, and lastly, a fuel cell factory for converting hydrogen into mobile and stationary power.
"Over the next three years, we will invest over INR 60,000 crores in these initiatives. Reliance will thus create and offer a fully integrated, end-to-end renewable energy ecosystem," Ambani added.
Through the establishment of the solar PV giga factory, Reliance aims to achieve lowest-cost solar modules in the world, and enable 100GW of solar energy, and help meet India's 450 GW renewable energy by 2030 target.
While through the energy storage giga factory, the company plans to explore new and advanced electrochemical technologies that can be used for large-scale grid battery storage.
Speaking of the role of hydrogen in the deep decarbonization of several key sectors, he added, that the Reliance electrolyzer giga factory will help produce modular electrolyzers with the highest efficiency and lowest capital cost. The electrolyzers will find use in the captive production of green hydrogen for domestic use and global sale.
As fuel cell replaces ICE engines in the global transition to clean transportation, Reliance's fuel cell giga factory, will help progressively replace ICE engines and fuel automobiles, trucks and buses, and large mobile engines, he added. Fuel cells can also be used in other stationary applications such as data centers, microgrids, emergency generators, industrial equipment, and others.
Ambani also announced that the Jamnagar complex will provide all the necessary infrastructure and utilities to support manufacturers with the right capabilities in the nationwide ecosystem.
"We will invest an additional INR 15,000 crore in the value chain, partnerships, and future technologies including upstream and downstream industries. Thus, overall initial investment from its own internal resources in the New Energy business will be INR 75,000 (over $10 billion) crore in three years," Ambani said.
In another key announcement at the AGM, Mukesh Ambani also announced that Aramco Chairman, Yasir Al-Rumayyan will join the Reliance board as an independent director. Yasir is one of the most renowned names in the energy and finance sector globally.