6th Session International Solar Alliance Assembly
Source: PIB
GS III: Environment; GS II: Infrastructure
Overview
- News in Brief
- What are the outcomes of the Meeting?
- About International Solar Alliance Assembly
- International Solar Allaince
Why in the News?
The Sixth Assembly of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) was hosted at Bharat Mandapam.
News in Brief
- Ministers from 20 countries and delegates from 116 Member and Signatory countries participated in the Assembly.
- International Solar Alliance is steadfast in its commitment to Member Countries to make solar as the energy source of choice.
- The International Solar Alliance is steadfast in its commitment to Member Countries to make solar as the energy source of choice, foster environments conducive to attracting investments and ensure ample energy availability to meet the surging global demands.
What are the outcomes of the Meeting?
- 6th Assembly of ISA has decided to increase viability gap funding for projects from 10% up to 35%.
- The ISA has a programme for VGF so that viability gap funding is available for projects in developing countries.
- The grant provided under the mechanism is USD 150,000 or 10% of the project cost (whichever is lower), per country per project.
- Depending on the capacity and needs of the countries and their respective projects.
- This will enable more investments to flow into Africa.
Viability Gap Funding: Aim at supporting infrastructure projects that are economically justified but fall marginally short of financial viability. Only for infrastructure projects.
Four projects set up with ISA’s assistance
- Solarisation of the parliament building of the Republic of Malawi.
- Solarisation of two rural health care centres in the Republic of Fiji.
- Installation of 1 solar-powered cold storage of capacity 5 MT for the benefit of agricultural stakeholders at La Digue Island, Republic of Seychelles.
- Solarisation of the Nawai Junior Secondary School (JSS) in the Republic of Kiribati, with a 7 kW Solar PV rooftop system paired with a 24-kWh BSS
Training centres set up across Africa
- Providing expertise, handholding and training support.
- ISA’s initiative to launch Demonstration Projects in May 2020, to meet the needs of Least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
- The aim has been to exhibit solar technology applications which can be scaled up, and build the capacity of beneficiary member countries.
About International Solar Alliance Assembly
- The Assembly is the apex decision-making body of ISA, in which each member country is represented.
- This body makes decisions concerning the implementation of the ISA’s Framework Agreement and coordinated actions to be taken to achieve its objective.
- The Assembly meets annually at the Ministerial level at the seat of the ISA, and assesses the aggregate effect of the programmes and other activities in terms of deployment of solar energy, performance, reliability, as well as cost and scale of finance.
International Solar Allaince
The ISA is an Indian initiative, jointly launched by India and France in Paris, on the sidelines of COP-21, the UN Climate Conference held in Paris.
- It is instituted to connect 121 solar-resource-rich nations for research, low-cost financing and rapid deployment of clean energy.
- It aims to channel $300 billion in 10 years to promote renewable energy projects under a global mega fund for clean energy.
- Further, ISA has also been developing a Common Risk Mitigating Mechanism (CRMM) for de-risking and reducing the financial cost of solar projects in the ISA member countries.
- ISA needs ratification of its framework agreement by 15 member countries to be recognised as intergovernmental and multilateral agency under the United Nations charter.
- The first 15 countries who ratified the agreement would then be founding members of ISA.
- The framework agreement was opened for signatures in the 22nd session of the UN Climate Change Conference held at Marrakech, Morocco in 2016.
- It has recently become a treaty-based international intergovernmental organization with the ratification by Guinea as the 15th country.
Daily Current Affairs: Click Here