Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), the oil-to-telecom giant headed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, revealed on Tuesday that Brookfield Asset Management and it had inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the production of renewable energy and decarbonization equipment in Australia.
“The MoU aims to both accelerate and de-risk Australia’s energy transition by enabling it to locally produce clean energy equipment such as PV modules, long duration battery storage and components for wind energy,” RIL said in a release.
“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,” said Anant Ambani, Director, Reliance New Energy Ltd.
In accordance with the conditions of the Memorandum of Understanding, Brookfield will collaborate with Reliance to investigate opportunities for direct capital investment and the advancement of skills, knowledge, and experience in Australia’s renewable energy industry in order to support the country’s move towards a net zero future.
Reliance and Brookfield will assess the possibility of establishing cutting-edge facilities in Australia to produce or assemble the equipment required for the development of renewable energy projects and to offer it to all market participants, including Origin Energy Markets.
“Australia has a proud history of manufacturing and an abundance of raw materials, but the industry is not currently cost competitive. 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,” said Luke Edwards, Brookfield Renewable Head of Australia.
In order to purchase Origin Energy, Brookfield and EIG signed a legally binding contract in March of this year. Brookfield, its institutional partners, and the international institutional investors GIC and Temasek have outlined a plan to invest between a $20 billion and a $30 billion over the following ten years to accelerate its energy transition as part of its proposed acquisition of the Origin Energy Markets division.
“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,” Edwards added.
By supporting this investment, the MoU with Reliance aims to guarantee a steady and sufficient supply of the clean energy machinery needed to build up to 14 GW of new, large-scale generating and storage capacity in Australia.
