Reliance signs MoU with Brookfield for renewable power equipment manufacturing in Australia

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), the billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led oil-to-telecom conglomerate, on Tuesday announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Brookfield Asset Management for manufacturing renewable energy and decarbonization equipment in Australia.

Under the terms of the MoU, Brookfield will work with Reliance to explore avenues of direct capital investment and development of skills, knowledge and expertise in the renewable energy sector of Australia to facilitate the nation’s transition to a net zero future.

“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.

Reliance and Brookfield will evaluate the establishment of advanced operations in Australia to make/or assemble equipment used in the construction of renewable energy projects supplying equipment to all players in the market including Origin Energy Markets.

“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 March this year, Brookfield signed a binding agreement with EIG to acquire Origin Energy. 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 MoU with Reliance intends to support this investment to ensure consistent and adequate supply of the clean energy equipment required to develop up to 14 GW of new, large-scale generation and storage capacity in Australia. 

“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.

“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.