Oil and gas behemoth, Reliance Industries will focus on growth in its renewable energy segment and plans to pilot projects in biofuels, solar energy and fuel cells, its Chairman Mukesh Ambani said.

"As part of our road-map for value creation, we are entering into the renewable energy space, as a natural extension of our conventional energy platform. Our efforts will be on piloting projects in alternative energy," he told shareholders at the company's 35th annual general meeting.

"Research and proof of concept project in biofuel, solar energy and fuel cells, to understand and enable scale-up, would characterise this effort. Our efforts would be to grow the conventional energy and material platform through greater global scale and competitiveness," he said.

Currently, solar photo-voltaic cells to generate power is considered a costly proposition in India. Although India can produce solar cells with a total capacity of more than 50 MW, it uses less than half of this due to higher cost of generation compared to thermal and wind.

The Solar Group of RIL has already implemented a large electrification programme at the community and village level in Maharashtra in 2007-08.