From Paris To Bharat Mandapam: PM Modi's Solar Alliance Grows

In the first six months of this fiscal year alone India has added 24.56 GW of renewable capacity.

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On the opening day of COP21 in Paris (30th November 2015), PM Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande announced the International Solar Alliance (ISA). The concept was aimed at countries that have lots of sun and very little credit. The idea was that the ISA would help these countries develop solar projects and then help them get the finance to actually build them.

The Alliance’s 9th Assembly gets under way at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 2nd November with PM Modi opening the proceedings. India has filled the same building with two other events which are running until 5th November. The first is the Bharat Renewable Energy Summit and Expo (taking the place of the old RE-Invest summit). The second is the 4th International Conference on Green Hydrogen. Delegations from over 130 countries and more than 40 Ministers are expected.

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Pralhad Joshi, Union Minister of New and Renewable Energy, is the Chairman of the Assembly as President. Mathieu Lefèvre, France’s Minister Delegate for Ecological Transition, is co-chair. Paris would like another term as co-president of the alliance. Lefèvre is in Delhi in part to secure that.

Africa is the perfect example of why the ISA was necessary. The ISA puts it at about 60 per cent of the world’s best solar resources being on the continent, yet Africa has just about 1 per cent of the world’s installed solar capacity. Investment has followed the same pattern. In 2024 investors put US$521bn into solar globally but only about US$9bn of that went to Africa.

Banks view the small projects in the poorer countries as very risky and as a result they charge such high interest rates that many of them simply can’t go ahead.

The Pacific islands have it far worse. The WEF reckon some spend as much as 12.9% of their GDP on imported fossil fuels.

How the alliance closes the gap

The ISA’s principal tool is to take on some of the risk which keeps the private........

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