Ambani believes green push will ‘outshine’ other Reliance businesses

Ambani is steering Reliance’s pivot toward renewable energy and diversifying away from its traditional crude oil refining business

By Debjit Chakraborty and P R Sanjai

Reliance Industries Ltd, which pledged to spend $76 billion on green energy, will scale up investments in the area as its billionaire owner, Mukesh Ambani, seeks a strong foothold in the sector where competition is heating up.

“Over the next 12 months, our investments across the green energy value chain will gradually start going live, scaling up over the next couple of years,” Ambani, Reliance’s chairman, said in the annual report for the financial year that ended March 31. “This new growth engine holds great promise to outshine all our existing growth engines in just 5-7 years.”

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Ambani is steering Reliance’s pivot toward renewable energy and diversifying away from its traditional crude oil refining and petrochemicals businesses. The tycoon has a track record of implementing business transformations and has morphed Reliance from being an energy giant to a consumer services behemoth in the last decade.

Ambani and another Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani -- Asia’s richest person who also has ambitious plans for the renewable sector -- have announced plans to invest more than $140 billion in green projects. India, the world’s third-biggest polluter, is relying on the two billionaires as it chases the pledge to be net carbon zero by 2070.

“India and Reliance will aim to play a leading role in the world’s transition to clean energy,” Ambani said. Reliance’s share price jumped as much as 1.5 per cent on Monday after the annual report was published.

Some other key points from Ambani’s note to shareholders in the annual report:

> Reliance will develop end-to-end green energy solutions to provide abundant energy available “at the most affordable price”
> Commenced development of four factories at Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar
> Completed acquisitions and investments of more than 55 billion rupees ($691.5 million) to build capabilities in new energy
> Switch to green energy will allow upgrade of syngas -- it’s produced by running petroleum coke through gasifiers -- toward making high value petrochemicals and hydrogen fuel
> Telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. has carried out testing across sites and completed 5G coverage planning across 1,000 Indian cities
> Reliance Jio has developed use cases for 5G in health care and industrial automation