First International Solar Alliance Summit

The first International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit took place in New Deli, on March 11 with the presence of 50 countries, including 11 African Presidents and several African prime ministers.

In his opening remarks, French President Emmanuel Macron identified the three top priorities of ISA as 1) identification of solar projects; 2) mobilization of public and private finance at scale with a focus on guarantee instruments; and 3) transfer of innovative technology solutions and capacity-building. Indian Prime Minister Modi highlighted the need to ensure that better and more affordable solar technology is available and accessible to everyone.

The Summit focused on various aspects of promoting solar energy like credit mechanism, crowd funding and sharing of technology breakthroughs and discussed various projects being prepared by different countries in areas including rural electrification, off grid solar, water supply and irrigation. 

During the Summit a partnership agreement between the African Development Bank and ISA to scale up solar energy in Africa was also signed. The declaration lays out areas of deeper cooperation between ISA and the Bank, including:

• Developing innovative financial instruments to reduce risks and costs associated with solar investments and to leverage climate financing and commercial co-financing;
• Supporting technical assistance and knowledge transfer for solar development and deployment;
• Support for the Bank’s 10 GW Desert to Power solar initiative;
• Mobilizing concessional financing through the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA) and other Bank-hosted funds; and
• Developing finance instruments for off-grid solar projects, as well as large-scale solar independent power producers for African ISA member countries.

The International Solar Alliance initiative was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former French President Francois Hollande. SA is a treaty-based international body for the promotion of solar energy in alliance with 121 countries, which are fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn with a set target to achieve 1 TW of solar energy by 2030. So far only 61 countries have signed the ISA Framework Agreement, including Brazil, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tome and Principe from the Portuguese Speaking Countries.