Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has made a wave of partnerships to give shape to its green energy business that spans solar, battery and hydrogen investments and could contribute almost 10 per cent of the company's pre-tax profits in five years, a report said.
The oil-to-retail conglomerate announced a wave of partnerships with REC, NexWafe, Sterling and Wilson, Stiesal and Ambri for total costs of $1.2 billion.
“With these investments, Reliance has acquired the expertise and technology portfolio to start to build a fully integrated end-to-end renewables energy ecosystem through solar, batteries and hydrogen,” brokerage Bernstein said in a report. “Reliance will commercialise the acquired technologies and set up manufacturing plants in India.”
Reliance is expected to continue to invest in technology such as fuel cells and key materials for the clean energy sector.
"Based on our assumptions, we believe the new energy business could contribute almost 10 per cent of the company's total EBITDA by FY'26 assuming all the factories are constructed and ramped up on the company's timeline," it said. "This will make Reliance a highly diversified conglomerate spanning E&P, refining, petrochemicals, clean energy, telecoms, retail and internet, although we suspect that the company will be split up given the inefficiency of such a corporate structure."
Reliance still needs the technology for fuel cell development, which the company is expected to acquire or license from one of the industry leaders such as Plug Power, Ballard, or Ceres.