Top Indian Refiner To Invest $25 Billion In Net-Zero Push

Indian Oil Corporation, the largest refiner in India, plans to invest $25 billion to achieve net-zero emissions from operations by 2046, its chairman told shareholders at the annual general meeting on Thursday. 

Indian Oil will target to have 60% of its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions mitigated and the rest offset in various ways including by buying carbon credits, Shrikant Madhav Vaidya, chairman of the state-owned refiner, said, as carried by Bloomberg. 

India as a country has pledged to achieve net-zero by 2070.

The top refiner in the country aims to be net-zero emissions from operations decades earlier.   

“The company is embarking on a decarbonisation journey that will be crucial not only for the company’s destiny but also for the planet,” its chairman Vaidya said today, as quoted by Reuters.

Indian Oil will invest most in decarbonizing operations at its refineries and petrochemicals-producing facilities, which represent 97% of all operations, Vaidya added.  

Indian Oil, which plans to boost its refining capacity by one-third to 2.14 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2025, expects to cut emissions from operations by using renewable energy and building green hydrogen plants at two of its refineries, at Panipat and Mathura. 

Another large refiner in India, Reliance Industries of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, said this year it plans to be Net Carbon Zero by 2035. The telecoms-to-oil refining conglomerate owns the biggest refinery in India and the biggest refining hub in the world, Jamnagar. 

Reliance Industries also plans to invest as much as $76 billion in green energy projects in India over the next 15 years, the conglomerate said early this year. Reliance Industries already announced last year a commitment to invest more than $10 billion in three years in a new business unit that would build solar module, battery storage, electrolyser, and fuel cell factories. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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