RIL Signs MoU With Brookfield For Renewable Power And Decarbonisation Equipment

Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) and Brookfield Asset Management on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore opportunities to make renewable energy and decarbonisation equipment in Australia. The company in a statement to the exchange said that the MoU aims to accelerate and de-risk Australia’s energy transition by enabling it to locally produce clean energy equipment such as photovoltaic modules, long-duration battery storage, and components for wind energy. This will help Australia transition to a net zero future, the statement stated.

Brookfield, in March this year, had also signed a binding agreement with EIG to acquire Origin Energy. The proposed acquisition is now going through the relevant approvals processes. As part of its proposed acquisition of the Origin Energy Markets division, Brookfield along with its institutional partners and global institutional investors GIC and Temasek have set out a plan to invest between A$20 billion and A$30 billion over the next ten years to accelerate its energy transition.

“The energy transition creates an opportunity to bring advanced manufacturing processes created offshore to Australia, which would secure the supply of critical equipment for the transition to help drive down Australia’s emissions faster and contribute significantly to job creation. We want to help kickstart a new era in local manufacturing that will benefit domestic renewables developers, including Origin Energy Markets, and many communities around Australia. We are establishing these types of global partnerships in manufacturing now to allow us to get started as quickly as possible given the ever-reducing timeline for Australia to reach its first emissions-reductions targets in 2030,” said Luke Edwards, Brookfield Renewable Head of Australia.

Anant Ambani, director, Reliance New Energy, is confident that both companies will provide a fillip to the global green energy movement. “”Reliance is pursuing opportunities of investment in India and globally with great enthusiasm and passion. We are confident that Reliance and Brookfield will explore avenues in green energy in Australia, accelerating the nation’s transition to a Net Zero future and providing a fillip to the global green energy movement,” he said.

India’s clean energy sector, which is expected to grow to a $200-billion market and see cumulative spending of $2 trillion by 2050, is the next key trigger for Reliance Industries’ stock, financial services firm Bernstein has said.

“We believe the clean-energy business to be worth Rs 200 a share today but with plenty of scope for expansion over time,” Bernstein said in a June 9 report. The value is nearly 8 per cent of the company’s current market price of around Rs 2,500 a share. It expects Reliance to potentially achieve $10 billion of revenue from the new energy business in 2030, which represents 40 per cent of the TAM (total addressable market).

At 11.55am, shares of Reliance Industries were trading at Rs 2,525.70 apiece, down 0.87 per cent on the BSE on Tuesday.