RIL to focus on renewable energy, says Mukesh Ambani

Oil and gas behemoth, Reliance Industries will focus on growth in its renewable energy segment and plans to pilot projects in biofuels, solar energy and fuel cells, its Chairman Mukesh Ambani said today.

"As part of our road-map for value creation, we are entering into the renewable energy space, as a natural extension of our conventional energy platform. Our efforts will be on piloting projects in alternative energy," he told shareholders at the company's 35th annual general meeting here.

"Research and proof of concept project in biofuel, solar energy and fuel cells, to understand and enable scale-up, would characterise this effort. Our efforts would be to grow the conventional energy and material platform through greater global scale and competitiveness," he said.

Currently, solar photo-voltaic cells to generate power is considered a costly proposition in India. Although India can produce solar cells with a total capacity of more than 50 MW, it uses less than half of this due to higher cost of generation compared to thermal and wind.

The Solar Group of RIL has already implemented a large electrification programme at the community and village level in Maharashtra in 2007-08.

The project spanned across Nandurbar, Thane, Dhule, Amravati, Nasik, Raigad, Kolhapur and Chandrapur and involved providing lighting for over 14,000 households in over 84 villages in these districts.

It was awarded by the Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (MEDA) to promote electrification of remote rural households in the state. The company said it would also focus to bring about rural transformation by improving income and skill levels by linking farmers in rural areas to urban and export markets.

"Equally, it would be on improving quality of lives in rural India through endeavours in education, health, natural resource management and community development," Ambani said.