Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron on March 11, 2018 co-chaired the first Founding Conference of International Solar Alliance, ISA at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
- The one day summit seeks to mobilise one trillion dollars of investments needed by 2030 for massive deployment of solar energy.
- 21 Heads of State participated: Apart from presence of the President of France, 21 Heads of State and Government, six Vice Presidents and deputy Prime Ministers, 19 Ministers as Heads of Delegation attended the conference. In addition to many other Ministers, ten heads of multilateral bank, top representatives from UN agencies, corporate sector, were present from all over the world.
- Prime Minister Modi stressed on inclusiveness and presented 10 action points which include; making affordable solar technology available to all nations, raising the share of electricity generated from photovoltaic cells in the energy mix and framing regulations and standards to support the initiative.
- India will provide $1.4 billion line of credit that will cover 27 projects in 15 countries and boost the much-required financial power to the solar sector.
- Target of 175 gigawatts: He told the gathering that India will generate 175 gigawatts of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2022. This would be more than double the present renewable energy capacity and would be enough to overtake renewable expansion in the European Union for the first time.
- 500 training slots: As a demonstration of India’s commitment to ISA, 500 training slots will be created for member countries and a solar technology mission will be started to lead Research & Development in the sector.
- 121 countries joined the alliance: According to the Prime Minister, of the 121 countries, 61 have joined the alliance and 32 have ratified the Framework Agreement.
- One trillion dollars needed: As per the vising French President, one trillion dollars will be needed to achieve one terawatt of solar power capacity by 2030.
- Financial mechanism: The French President outlined that there are financing and regulation hurdles for achieving the target which need to be cleared by government, private sector and civil society coming together. The summit deliberated on finance mechanism for the promotion of solar energy, crowd-funding and technology transfer.
- Delhi Solar Agenda: The leaders of the founding states of ISA adopted the Delhi Solar Agenda. The agenda re-emphasises the determination of ISA member states to increase the share of solar energy in their national energy mix and to facilitate joint R&D effort among other things.
- What is an ISA?
- The Paris Declaration on November 30, 2015, establishes ISA as an alliance dedicated to the promotion of solar energy among its member countries.
- The ISA’s major objectives include global deployment of over 1,000 GW of solar generation capacity and mobilisation of investment of over US$ 1000 billion into solar energy by 2030.
- The ISA brings together countries with rich solar potential to aggregate global demand, thereby reducing prices through bulk purchase, facilitating the deployment of existing solar technologies at scale, and promoting collaborative solar R&D and capacity building. Currently, there are 121 countries, with a large participation from Africa, Southeast Asia, and Europe, which have in principle agreed to be members of the ISA.
- When the ISA Framework Agreement entered into force on December 6th, 2017, ISA formally became a de-jure treaty based International Intergovernmental Organization, headquartered at Gurugram, India.
- As of now the ISA Framework Agreement has been signed by 61 countries and 32 have ratified the Framework Agreement.
- The ISA is the first treaty-based intergovernmental organisation to be based in India.
