One of the major outcomes of French President Francois Hollande’s visit to India is the financial commitment to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s concept of International Solar Alliance (ISA). While inaugurating the interim secretariat of ISA in Gurgaon on Monday, Hollande announced a whopping 300 million Euros assistance, hailing the concept as a “new chapter”.
Modi and Hollande laid the foundation stone of the headquarters of ISA at National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gurgaon. “France will invest 300 million Euros for ISA and our companies will contribute through technological improvement and R&D,” Hollande said.
Modi welcomed French commitment to support the solar projects launched by the member countries of ISA which is in line with the financing of 2 billion Euros for the development of renewable energies, announced by France during Conference of Parties (CoP21). The initiative aimed at increasing utilisation and promotion of solar energy in solar-rich nations was launched by both the leaders on the sidelines of CoP21 in Paris last month.
India has offered a contribution of Rs100 crore for ISA corpus fund. In addition, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) and Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) will put $2 million in this corpus. IREDA is the financing agency for renewable power projects and SECI is a subsidiary of Ministry of Renewable Energy for executing solar power projects.
“like United Nations and World Health Organisation, it (ISA) also belongs to the whole world,” said Modi. Interestingly, Hollande and Modi reached the venue in Gurgaon through the Delhi Metro. Modi said this step was to encourage people to take environment friendly steps to help fight climate change and global warming.
Modi said that new innovation and research is required to meet climate change commitments and added that within a short time India has already installed more than 5,000 Mega Watt (MW) solar power plants.
Minister of State for Coal, Power and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal said India has embarked on the world’s largest renewable energy targets.
India aims to install 1,75,000 MW of renewable-based power projects by 2022, out of which 100,000 MW is solar. It also plans to increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy substantially by 2030.
He further said prices of lED bulbs have gone down and their production scaled up by 100 times. These lights have replaced nearly 770 million bulbs besides 35 million streetlights across the country, catering to peak demand of 22,000 MW. This would not only save $ 6 million, but also cut emission of 85 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.