On receipt of 15 ratifications, the International Solar Alliance (ISA) Framework Agreement entered into force on the 6th December 2017 thereby making ISA a de jure treaty-based international intergovernmental organisation.
- In one of its first outreach programmes post-ratification, the ISA hosted a two Day Event ‘International Solar Alliance Forum’ during 17-18th January 2018 at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) 2018.
- WFES is a signature event of a global initiative, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, hosted by Masdar held during 15-18th January 2018 at Abu Dhabi (UAE).
- On 17th January 2018 the Ministerial Plenary of ISA Energy Ministers was held which was attended by seven Energy Ministers of ISA Member countries. They presented their views on benefits of collaboration, synergies, and knowledge sharing at the international level to scale up solar energy for universal energy access and investing in Innovations, Technology and R&D for solar projects followed by breakout sessions.
- Addressing on the occasion, Shri Raj Kumar Singh, Minister of State (IC) for Power and New & Renewable Energy, Government of India congratulated ISA for organising the ISA Forum.
- He said that India has one of the fastest growing Renewable Energy programmes in the World and would achieve 175 GW target of installed Renewable Energy capacity well before 2020. He also announced $ 350 million Solar Development Fund by the Government of India for Solar Projects Financing
- At the end of the session, the YES Bank committed financing solar projects of over $5 Billion. M/s CLP and M/s NTPC Limited announced forging partnership deal with ISA and committed to make voluntary contribution of $1 million each to ISA fund corpus. IEA and GCF also announced entering into partnership with ISA.
- Nine companies exchanged LoIs/MoUs for solar related projects in the ISA Pavilion. The companies are: Vyonarc Development Ltd., Greenko Solar, Gensol Group and SOLARIG from Spain, Shakti Pump, Refex Energy, Amplus Solar, TATA Power, Jackson Solar,Hero Future Group and Zodiac Energy.
About ISA
- The Paris Declaration establishes ISA as an alliance dedicated to the promotion of solar energy among its member countries.
- The ISA’s major objectives include global deployment of over 1,000GW of solar generation capacity and mobilisation of investment of over US$ 1000 billion into solar energy by 2030.
- The ISA brings together countries with rich solar potential to aggregate global demand, thereby reducing prices through bulk purchase, facilitating the deployment of existing solar technologies at scale, and promoting collaborative solar R&D and capacity building.
- When the ISA Framework Agreement entered into force on December 6th, 2017, ISA formally became a de-jure treaty based International Intergovernmental Organization, headquartered at Gurugram, India.
- As of now the ISA Framework Agreement has been signed by 48 countries, with 19 of them also depositing the instruments of ratification with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.
