The Indian Corporate Race to Go Green

With robust UN commitments and ambitious strides taken by various countries to cut down on pollution and reduce carbon footprints, promoting a green and clean way of life has gained much ground (and has been recently recognised as a human right as per a watershed resolution undertaken by the United Nations Human Rights Council). In response to the clarion call, various strong economies of the world have pledged their full-fledged support to emerging economies in their strive to comply with UN resolutions. Strong Production Linked Incentives (PLI) are being given to entrepreneurs to come up with unique and unprecedented ideas that go by visions of the world and bridge the gap between the present and the envisaged clean and green world.
Reliance Industries Limited, an Oil to Chemical (O2C) conglomerate with a diverse and illustrious portfolio has decided to enter into the renewable energy sector and race upon his Gujrati brethren Gautam Adani who has begun his journey in this sector with Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) in 2015. AGEL’s blockbuster performance on the Indian bourses has led to the manifold growth of Adani’s wealth in the last few years.
Reliance is building a green energy business to supply the equipment; India will need for its green energy revolution.
Also, the firm has committed to become net carbon zero by 2035, which is earlier than any other energy company in the region. 
Reliance is targeting solar manufacturing of 100 GW and green hydrogen costs of $1 per kg by 2030. It envisions spending $10 billion on the new energy business over the next 3 years towards achieving these targets.
Over the next 3 years, Reliance is planning to spend ₹60,000 crores to construct four ‘Giga factories’ to make integrated solar Photovoltaic modules, electrolysers, fuel cells and batteries to store energy from the grid. The site of these plants will be located at the new 5,000 acres Green Energy Giga Complex in Jamnagar, Gujarat. An additional ₹15,000 crore is expected to be used for investments across the value chain, technology, and partnerships for the new energy business.
Reliance New Energy Solar Limited (RNESL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), set up in 2021, is acquiring 100 percent in Faradion Ltd. for an enterprise value of £100 million. Faradion is a battery technology firm based out of Sheffield and Oxford in the United Kingdom.
RIL said that Faradion has a competitively superior, strategic, wide-reaching, and extensive portfolio covering several aspects of sodium-ion technology. The conglomerate claimed that its sodium-ion technology provides significant advantages compared with alternative battery technologies particularly lithium-ion and lead-acid in areas such as sustainability, cost, scalability, performance and fast charge.
In this context, mention must be made of the Storage battery leader Exide Industries who is looking forward to setting up the first lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facility in India called Advance Cell Chemistry Project or ACC. It may look for a Joint Venture for the facility and would take a final call after the rolling out of the fine print of the PLI scheme by the Central Government. This would be in addition to the lithium-ion battery facility set up by the company in Gujarat in collaboration with Leclanche Energy. However, the existing facility does not manufacture lithium-ion cells and is more of an assembly unit.
The acquisition of Faradion Ltd. is in line with the massive growth plans that RIL has in clean energy. It has already struck a few deals that included a $45 million investment in German firm NexWafe GmbH which makes photovoltaic solar wafers and a cooperation agreement with Denmark-based Stiesdal A/S for technology development, and manufacturing of the latter’s hydrogen electrolysers in India. RNESL and Stiesdal have also agreed to extend their collaboration to the development and implementation of other path-breaking climate change technologies — including offshore wind energy, next-generation fuel cells for conversion of hydrogen to electricity for mobile and static electricity generation, long-duration energy storage and production of carbon-negative fuels.  RNESL will support NexWafe in completing the commercial development of the latter’s solar photovoltaic products on prototype lines in Freiburg, Germany. The companies will jointly develop technologies and commercialise monocrystalline ‘green solar wafers’ in India. 
In August 2021, RNESL along with strategic investors Paulson & Co Inc and Bill Gates, and a few other investors, had announced an investment of $144 million in Ambri Inc, an energy storage company based in Massachusetts, US.
Earlier, RIL had announced that its subsidiary (RNESL) would be picking up 40% in Sterling and Wilson for ₹2,845 crores, as it is one of the leading global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and operation and maintenance (O&M) companies in the renewables sector. Recently, Sterling & Wilson’s board of directors has approved the allotment of 29.3 million equity shares to RNESL aggregating to Rs 10.99 billion. Also, on consummation of the transaction under the share subscription agreement — dated October 10, 2021 — executed between RNESL, Shapoorji Pallonji and Company Private Limited and Khurshed Daruvala (Chairman), RNESL will become a promoter of the Sterling & Wilson along with the existing promoters and promoter group of the firm.
RNESL is also set to acquire REC Solar Holdings from China National Bluestar, Europe’s largest solar panel manufacturer for $771 million. REC is a well-established manufacturer of polysilicon, photovoltaic cells and modules with plants in Norway and Singapore. Using the technology of REC, Reliance will build a new integrated solar manufacturing plant in Jamnagar and expand capacity globally.

Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) operates the Kamuthi Solar Power Project which is one of the largest solar photovoltaic plants in the world. AGEL was the first Indian company to offer investment-grade US dollar green Bonds to foreign investors. In early 2020, French energy company Total S.A. entered into a binding agreement with AGEL for the investment of $510 million to acquire a 20% stake in the latter.

Tech Mahindra has recently approved a proposal for the acquisition of a 100% stake in Allyis India and Green Investments, for a total consideration of up to $125 million. The acquisition is expected to bolster Tech Mahindra’s capabilities in digital experience solutions— learning and development, marketing, instructional design; and engineering ——-cloud and automation, analytics, and technical support services.

India lies largely in the tropical zone with the Tropic of Cancer running almost through the middle of it. There is abundance of optimum but untapped sunlight that can be harnessed making it commercially viable which is an inherent strength or strategic advantage that India has over many other developed nations which largely lie in temperate zones.

Just as Reliance brought about a paradigm shift in the mobile networking business with its characteristic Jio brand, it is expected that the entry of big players like Reliance, Adani and Mahindra in a potential-filled prospective sector still in its nascent stages, will bring about a rapid turn of events changing the entire way life has been till now. India can become more self-reliant and less dependent on import of non-renewable resources, not being driven by the export whims of different countries which is quite in cue with the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative of the Government of India. Reduced dependence on conventional sources of energy can drastically reduce pollution, save foreign exchange in the short run as import substitutes and even be exchange earners in the long run.