Business / We've 'no option' but to make businesses go green to survive: Mukesh Ambani

Mumbai: The world has no option but to do business in a sustainable manner, and Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will transform each of its units as its strives to achieve net zero-carbon emissions by 2035, chairman Mukesh Ambani said.

“We have no option as a society, as a business, but to really adopt a sustainable business model," the RIL chairman and managing director said at the start of the three-day Qatar Economic Forum. Sustainability is a prerequisite for every business to survive, and this means transforming businesses and integrating them with the future, the billionaire businessman added.

Ambani had mentioned his plans to make the oil-to-telecom-to-digital conglomerate net carbon zero by 2035 at the company’s annual general meeting last July.

RIL, India’s largest private sector enterprise, has laid out a 15-year vision to transform itself into a new energy company, with its focus on recycling carbon dioxide, creating value from plastic, and building clean and affordable energy with hydrogen, wind, solar, fuel cells and battery.

The company has begun converting its CO2 emissions at Jamnagar into high-value proteins, nutraceuticals, advanced materials and fuels. The company has the largest single site refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat with crude processing capacity of 1.24 million barrels per day.

It intends to develop next-generation carbon capture and storage technologies and is evaluating novel catalytic and electrochemical transformations to use CO2 as a valuable feedstock as RIL has proprietary technology to convert transportation fuels to valuable petrochemical and material building blocks. RIL also intends to replace transportation fuels with clean electricity and hydrogen.

When asked about the biggest challenge for industry as the world emerges from the pandemic, Ambani said the primary challenge is to “get rid of the vaccination divide" and a digital access divide as more people are forced to stay home to work and study in a pandemic-hit world. Reliance Jio Infocomm aims to close this access gap and boost connectivity, which according to Ambani is now akin to a basic need. “The digital divide must be bridged," he said. “Both among nations and within nations."