Mukesh Ambani has enlisted eight global technocrats, many of whom are advisers to governments, as part of a nine-member New Energy Council to enable Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to pivot from its traditional oil-to-gas business into a green energy giant.
The council will be headed by R Mashelkar, national research professor and independent director at RIL. It will include Alan Finkel, who led Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy and is a special adviser to that country’s government on low emissions technologies; Rachid Yazami, a winner of the Draper Prize for engineering; Robert Armstrong, director of MIT’s energy initiative; and Martin Green, known among his peers as the ‘father of photovoltaics’ for having revolutionised the efficiency and cost of solar cells.
The others on the council are David Milstein, known for breakthrough research in splitting water to get hydrogen, innovative energy storage systems and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS); Geoffrey Maitland, a professor of energy engineering at Imperial College, London, a global authority on carbon capture and storage technologies; and Henrik Stiesdal, a pioneer of the modern wind industry, with more than 175 inventions to his credit. Ambani will also be a member.
“Members of the council include not only the visionary behind the plan, Mukesh Ambani himself, but also authorities and leaders of global stature in solar, wind, CCUS, policy, and green technologies,” Mashelkar told ET. “They will be vital in not only leading an accelerated transition of India to clean energy but also in impacting global energy needs and markets.”
The council’s task will be to validate RIL’s plans for a focused technology roadmap to build a system for making clean and affordable energy in a span of five to 15 years. The panel will guide on technical strategy, help identify opportunities and advise on partnerships worldwide.
“Mukesh Ambani’s vision is well structured, bold, well-funded, and far-reaching,” said Finkel. “It is the product of deep planning and extreme commitment to Indian and global sustainability. It is national in scope, but offers far more clarity than most nations have been able to articulate.”
Reliance plans to spend ₹60,000 crore to construct four Giga factories to make integrated solar PV modules, electrolysers, fuel cells, and batteries to store energy from the grid. These plants will be located at the new 5,000-acre Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar. An additional ₹15,000 crore will be used for investments across the value chain, technology, and partnerships for the new energy business. Ultimately, Reliance plans to offer a fully integrated end-to-end renewables energy ecosystem to customers through solar, batteries, and hydrogen.
“Reliance has often co-opted accomplished global thought leaders and achievers as advisors in its growth journey,” a company spokesperson told ET.
RIL has among the world’s biggest petrochemical and refinery complexes at Jamnagar and has more recently built national scale businesses in telecom and retail. Over the past year or so, it has got more than $20 billion from Google, Facebook and bulge-bracket investors for stakes in these arms.
Ambani, 64, is known to seek the company of academicians, inventors, and thought leaders to absorb and validate ideas before embarking on any major project.
“Reliance’ strategy is analogous to the ‘pick shovels over mines’ approach,” foreign brokerage Bernstein said in a July 15 report.
https://m.economictimes.com/industry/renewables/8-technocrats-to-power-rils-green-dream/amp_articleshow/85637573.cms
