Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has become India’s largest bio-energy producer based on the company’s indigenously developed technology, Chairman Mukesh Ambani recently said at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM).
In this explainer, Moneycontrol looks at the work done by Reliance in the bio-energy segment and the bigger picture.
To start with, bio-energy is a form of energy which is generated from organic materials known as biomass.
What is the big picture?
RIL said the objective is to solve the issue of stubble burning which causes severe air pollution during winters.
“Your company prides itself in embracing societal challenges and delivering world-class solutions suited for India. In the same spirit, we took to solving the problem of severe pollution faced by many of our Indian cities during winters, caused by stubble burning, and accelerated our plans to deploy bio-energy projects,” said Ambani.
In North India, stubble burning is a major cause of air pollution. During the onset of winter, farmers set agricultural waste on fire to get rid of it and prepare the fields for sowing again. This causes pollution levels to rise and the air quality index to reach severe levels.
What has Reliance done so far?
Reliance has commissioned its first commercial-scale compressed bio-gas (CBG) plant at Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh in 10 months, Ambani had informed the AGM.
It had earlier set up two demo units for CBG at Jamnagar.
Reliance now plans to rapidly scale this up to 25 CBG plants across India.
What does Reliance plan to do?
Ambani said RIL targets to establish 100 compressed bio-gas (CBG) plants in the next five years, consuming 5.5 million tonnes of agro-residue and organic waste.
The company said the move would help in mitigating nearly 2 million tonnes of carbon emissions, and producing 2.5 million tonnes of organic manure annually. Reliance expects that this would also result in a reduction of about 0.7 MMTPA (million metric tonnes per annum) of imported LNG.
What is RIL's net zero plan and how does it aim to reach there?
Reliance is targeting net carbon zero by 2035. The company has said that its oil-to-chemicals business (O2C) will transition to a sustainable, green, circular and consumer-integrated, chemicals and materials business.
Ambani said the first stage of this strategy is to switch to 100 percent green energy for captive consumption to ‘net zero’, which will reduce the energy costs and make these assets cost-competitive. The second stage is to upgrade the refinery products into downstream value-added chemicals, for which RIL has developed in-house technology.
The key pillars of the O2C transition would be accelerating the company’s journey to achieve net carbon zero by 2035 through the use of renewables and bio-energy for a sustainable and green business and accelerating circularity and consumer integration, he added.
“We are well on our way to building the new energy ecosystem of manufacturing solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen and bio-energy platforms. This will enable us to speed up the development of our renewable generation assets to deliver round-the-clock electricity for our captive requirements as well as to meet the growing needs of Indian consumers,” he added.
Ambani said the company has also been working on scaling up its chemical recycling technology to deliver application-specific green products, which is helping Reliance access high-value, high-potential customers in new value chains.
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