Solar Alliance comes into existence 

Solar Alliance comes into existence 

Context

India’s global initiative, the International Solar Alliance (ISA)

What has happened?

India’s global initiative, the International Solar Alliance (ISA) that aims at increasing solar energy deployment in member countries, came into legal, independent existence

ISA

• Indian initiative: The ISA is an Indian initiative, jointly launched by Indian PM and the President of France on 30th November 2015 in Paris, on the side-lines of COP-21, the UN climate conference
• Aim: It aims at addressing obstacles to deployment at scale of solar energy through better harmonization and aggregation of demand from solar rich countries lying fully or partially between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn.
• The ISA, headquartered in India, has its Secretariat located in the campus of National Institute of Solar Energy, Gwalpahari, Gurgaon, Haryana
• Members: So far, 19 countries are part of the compact — Bangladesh, Comoros, Fiji, France, Ghana, Guinea, India, Mali, Mauritius, Nauru, Niger, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Tuvalu, Australia, Cuba, Malawi and Peru
• The ISA, also sees itself as on a mission to mobilise more than $1000 billion in investments needed by 2030 for
  • Massive deployment of solar energy
  • Pave the way for future technologies adapted to the needs of moving to a fossil-free future
  • Keeping global temperatures from rising above 2C by the end of the century
• India’s commitment: India has committed itself to having 175,000 MW of renewed energy in the grid by 2022
  • India’s contribution: As part of the agreement, India will contribute $27 million (₹175.5 crore approx) to the ISA for creating corpus, building infrastructure and recurring expenditure over five years from 2016-17 to 2020-21
  • Contribution by SECI & IREDA: In addition, public sector undertakings of the Government of India, Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) and Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), have made a contribution of $1 million (₹6.5 crore) each for creating the ISA corpus fund
• Initiatives under ISA:
  • Scaling Solar Applications for Agriculture Use
  • Affordable Finance atScale
  • Scaling Solar Mini–grids
  • Scaling Solar Rooftops
  • Scaling Solar E-mobility and Storage.

Common Risk Mitigating Mechanism

ISA has also been developing a Common Risk Mitigating Mechanism (CRMM) for de-risking and reducing the financial cost of solar projects in the ISA member countries. The instrument will help diversify and pool risks on mutual public resources and unlock significant investments. An international expert group has been working on the blue print of the mechanism and it will be rolled out by December 2018.

Digital infopedia

Another major initiative is establishment of Digital Infopedia which will serve as a platform to enable policy makers, Ministers and corporate leaders from ISA countries to interact, connect, communicate and collaborate with one another. The interactive platform was operationalized on 18^th May 2017