World Bank to back India's initiative on solar power

On the occasion of the visit of the World Bank President to India, the Interim Administrative Cell of the International Solar Alliance (ISA Cell) and the World Bank declared their intention to promote solar energy globally. The declaration was signed & exchanged by Upendra Tripathy, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Chairperson, ISA cell and Onno Ruhl, India Country Director, World Bank in the presence of Arun Jaitley Union Finance Minister, Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, and Dr Jim Yung Kim, President, World Bank. Major areas identified for working jointly include:

• Developing a roadmap to mobilize financing
• Developing financing instruments including credit enhancement, reduce hedging costs/currency risk, bond raising in locally denominated currencies etc. which support solar energy development and deployment
• Supporting ISA’s plans for solar energy through technical assistance and knowledge transfer;
• Working on mobilization of concessional financing through existing or, if needed, new trust funds
• Supporting RE-INVEST events. In addition, both sides decided to work in other areas and themes as jointly decided. France was represented by H.E Mr Christan TESTOT, Minister Counsellor and François-Joseph Schichan, Second Counsellor (Political), French Embassy in India

The Joint Declaration by the ISA cell and the World Bank will help in accelerating mobilization of finance for solar energy, and the Bank will have a major role in mobilizing more than US $1000 billion in investments that will be needed by 2030, to meet ISA’s goals for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy. In a short span of time ISA activities have increased significantly. Two Programmes of the ISA “Affordable finance at scale” and “Scaling solar applications for agricultural use,” have been launched. In addition, USA, UK and EU have evinced interest in developing additional programmes.  Further, Interim Administrative Cell of International Solar Alliance (ISA Cell) and the UNDP have joined hands for promoting ISA objectives in 121 prospective ISA   member countries.  This apart establishment of 24x7 knowledge centre is under way with the help of UNDP and NIC, Government of India.