RIL refineries to switch from grey to green hydrogen

Reliance Industries (RIL), India's largest company by market value, is readying its plan to partly replace the use of grey hydrogen with green hydrogen at its twin refineries in Jamnagar, Gujarat, as part of the rollout of its new energy units later this year. The oil-to-telecom conglomerate intends to use the solar panels it manufactures to power the electrolysers for producing green hydrogen, thereby replacing the grey hydrogen currently used by the refinery.

RIL, which is aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2035, targets commissioning a series of projects by the end of this year. It plans to commission 20-giga watt (GW) of solar power generation project by 2025, with the energy produced entirely utilised for green hydrogen production.

The company's solar energy ecosystem will convert sand into solar PV modules, as stated by RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani in the last annual general meeting. The solar giga factory will include manufacturing of photovoltaic (PV) modules, cells, wafers and ingots, polysilicon, and glass. The company aims to bring the factory on-stream in a phased manner by the end of 2025. The company is also planning a wind turbine manufacturing ecosystem.

RIL targets to install 100 GW of renewable energy generating units by 2030. It plans to set up the battery giga factory by 2026 to manufacture battery chemicals, cells, and packs, in addition to containerised energy storage solutions and a battery recycling facility.

The petroleum giant had earlier earmarked ₹75,000 crore for building five Giga factories in Jamnagar. Ambani earlier said that the company was ready to double its investment to scale up the new energy manufacturing ecosystem as he intends to lower the cost of green hydrogen to $1 a kilogram within a decade.

Ambani earlier announced the construction of five Giga factories— an integrated solar photovoltaic module factory, an advanced energy storage battery factory, an electrolyser factory, a fuel cell factory, and a power electronics factory— to create an ecosystem capable of generating 100GW of solar power by 2030 and achieving a net carbon-zero status by 2035.

It partnered with leading companies globally in solar, battery, and ectrolyser space. The giga factories are under construction on 5,000 acres of land in Jamnagar to build Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex. The vicinity also includes two refineries and a petrochemical complex.