(Bloomberg) -- Reliance Industries Ltd. plans to roll out its factories making renewables equipment over the next year, marking a milestone for billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s conglomerate that’s been pivoting away from its fossil fuel roots.
“Over the next 12 months, our focus is to bring new energy manufacturing facilities on-stream, operate them efficiently and, start developing” renewable energy generation projects, the flagship of the retail-to-refining group said in its annual report for the year ended March 31. “We would develop supply chain locally for self-sufficiency and reduce the reliance on imports.”
The tycoon had first spoken of Reliance’s foray into green energy at the annual shareholders’ meet in 2021, detailing plans to build four “giga factories” to make solar modules, hydrogen, fuel cells and to build a battery grid to store electricity.
Ambani’s green push is a significant shift for an empire that operates the world’s largest refining complex, giant petrochemical facilities and still draws half of its revenue from its oil-to-chemicals businesses.
Reliance’s investors will now be looking for more details on these giga factories when Asia’s richest person takes the dais to address shareholders on Aug. 29 — a once-a-year high-profile event from which Ambani has announced his biggest business initiatives. Reliance Industries has a net carbon zero target of 2035.
Reliance is doubling down on green energy at a time when its conventional energy businesses are grappling with low margins that also weighed down its latest quarterly earnings. Its telecom and retail units — Reliance is a sector leader in both — did better.
“We have a strong background of successfully introducing pioneering transformations and gaining leadership status across market segments,” Ambani wrote in the annual report. “I am confident that Reliance’s arrival on the global renewable energy landscape too will be truly disruptive.”
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