Modi, Hollande to lay foundation stone of ISA Headquarters

In his interaction with media today, Upendra Tripathy, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy said that ISA will be a major international body headquartered in India.

It will be a new beginning for accelerating development and deployment of solar energy for achieving universal energy access and energy security of the present and future generations.

Tripathy further said that India offered to host ISA at the premises of NISE and has offered 5 acre land.

Three floors of the Surya Bhawan of NISE has been offered for starting the interim Secretariat. India’s effort is to build an Iconic structure for ISA Secretariat. In addition, India has offered a contribution of Rs 100 crore (around US $15 million) for creating ISA corpus fund. In addition, Government of India has offered training support for ISA member countries at the National Institute of Solar Energy and also support to ISA member countries for demonstration projects for solar home lighting, solar pumps for farmers and for other solar applications.

ISA has been envisioned as a specialized platform and will contribute towards the common goal of increasing utilization and promotion of solar energy and solar applications in its member countries.

The Paris declaration on International Solar Alliance states that the countries share the collective ambition to undertake innovative and concerted efforts for reducing the cost of finance and cost of technology for immediate deployment of competitive solar generation, financial instruments to mobilise more than 1000 Billion US Dollars of investments needed by 2030 for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy and to pave the way for future solar generation, storage and good technologies for countries’ individual needs.

International Solar Alliance is an Indian initiative. It is an alliance of 121 solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn.

ISA was jointly launched by the Prime Minister of India and the President of France on 30 November 2015 at Paris, France on the side-lines of the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Representatives from around 70 countries including more than 30 Heads of the States and Heads of the Government level participated in the ISA launch ceremony.

The International Steering Committee (ISC) of the ISA has met two times on 1 December 2015 at Paris, France and 18 January 2016 at Abu Dhabi, UAE. The committee identified development of a focused road map for ISA and plan for involvement of national government, private sector, financing institutions and others in ISA activities and structure as important action points.