There’s a generational shift to what’s clean energy and fortunately India is been viewed very favorably on renewable. India ranks amongst the top 3 countries after US and China. So what excites investors to get into this? The pace of change we have here in India, the plug and play model for solar park and the other fiscal & incentives for renewable. The demand by investors is also reflected with a sharp drop in tariffs. Today's giga factory era demonstrates how far we've come. In 2009, an investor sponsored report titled Gigaton Throwdown challenged "entrepreneurs, business leaders, and policy makers to 'think big' and understand what it would take to massively scale up clean energy over the next ten years." Hydrogen was barely mentioned, indicating that it was not viewed as a scalable technology. Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest person, plans to scale up zero-carbon hardware in India. Reliance Industries, the oil and refining conglomerate he controls, plans to build four massive "giga factories." to produce photovoltaic modules, batteries, fuel cells, and, most importantly, electrolyzers for hydrogen production. A factory capable of producing 100 gigatonnes of solar panels in nine years is impressive, but it is not beyond the realm of today's possibilities. A number of companies already produce more than 10 gigatonnes of modules per year. Scale exists for batteries as well, with manufacturing expansions that will more than double current production capacity already in the works. These technologies, like fuel cells, are directly connected to our electrical grid. Hydrogen is unique. It can be used in the power sector as a zero-carbon fuel, but it is likely to be more useful in industrial processes that require high heat, which has traditionally been supplied by natural gas, coal, or oil. SSAB AB, a Swedish steelmaker, intends to produce zero-carbon steel using hydrogen within five years utilising hydrogen To do so in a zero-emissions manner—that is, using electrolyzers powered by renewables to isolate hydrogen atoms from water molecules rather than obtaining hydrogen from fossil fuels—a number of factors must be considered, beginning with competitive cost. Cost is determined by supply, which is determined by manufacturing cost—which is where Ambani's gigafactory ambition comes into play. Over the next three years, the company has planned to invest over Rs 60,000 crores to provide a fully integrated, end-to-end renewable energy ecosystem, including a factory to manufacture fuel cell technology. The company intends to construct four giga factories in order to manufacture and fully integrate all of the critical components of the New Energy ecosystem. It's a big plan, but not very detail oriented. Nonetheless, it bridges two aspects of decarbonization: those that exist today and are economical at scale, and those that require a significant effort to reach that point. Hydrogen was probably not even a glimmer in Mukesh Ambani's eye at the time. Perhaps Reliance's gigafactories will be able to deliver hydrogen on a scale that late-aughts venture capital investors and policymakers could not have imagined. If it succeeds, it will also push decarbonization to new heights. Thank you.
A fuel-cell manufacturing facility that converts hydrogen into motive and stationary power.
A solar photovoltaic module factory that produces solar energy.
A cutting-edge energy storage battery factory for storing intermittent energy.
An electrolyser manufacturing facility for the production of green hydrogen.
Regards,
Jaspreet Kaur Gurtatta,
Kautilya,
IBS Mumbai.
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Well written 👏🏻
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