New Delhi: India and France have been re-elected as the President and Co-President of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) for a term of two years at the virtual meeting of the Third Assembly held on Wednesday. The Third Assembly of the ISA was attended by 34 ISA Members ministers, 53 Member countries and five signatory and prospective member countries. Four new Vice-Presidents were also chosen to represent the four regions of ISA. The representatives of Fiji and Nauru for Asia Pacific Region; Mauritius and Niger for Africa Region; UK and Netherlands for Europe and other regions, and Cuba and Guyana for Latin America and Caribbean Region assumed the vice presidency.
The Assembly also approved the initiatives of the ISA Secretariat in institutionalising ISA's engagement with the private and public corporate sector through the Coalition for Sustainable Climate Action (CSCA). Ten public sector organisations in India presented a cheque for 1 million USD each at the assembly.
Speaking in the plenary, the President of the ISA assembly, India's Power and New and Renewable Energy Minister, RK Singh, appreciated the Alliance Members for coming together to work for combating climate change. He welcomed the seventh initiative on heating and cooling to be introduced for discussion in the Third Assembly. Singh said that Solar Energy has come a long way in the last five years and is now the fastest-growing energy source globally. He said, "Solar energy is already contributing around 2.8 percent of global electricity, and if trends were to continue, by 2030, solar will become most important source of energy for electricity production in large part of the world."
The minister also mentioned about various activities and programmes initiated by the ISA since the 2nd Assembly. He said that six programmes and two projects are now underway, covering various aspects of solar energy. A robust pipeline of more than US$ 5 billion has been developed for solar energy applications to meet lighting, irrigation, drinking water and productive energy requirements of the ISA member countries, which have so far been largely deprived of modern energy services.
The ISA has aggregated a demand for more than 2,70,000 solar pumps across 22 countries, more than 1 GW of Solar Rooftop across 11 countries, and more than 10 GW of Solar Mini-grids across nine countries under its respective programmes. Recently, ISA has initiated programmes for segregation of demand for 47 million home power systems which will not only meet subsistence energy needs of the rural households but will also contribute to improving health services and availability of portable water.
The Co-President of the Assembly, Barbara Pompili, France's Minister for Ecological Transition, said that the ISA has played an essential role to help redirect fund towards renewable energies, particularly in developing countries, and take up the challenge of providing energy at the service of all. Reiterating France's involvement, she pointed out that of the 1.5 billion Euros of financing France committed for solar projects in ISA member states, 1.15 billion Euros has been committed to concrete projects up until 2022.
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France has also supported the collaboration with the World Bank to mobilise financing — a facility "Sustainable Renewables Risk Mitigation Initiative" (SRMI) should help mobilise 18 billion Euros in private investment to finance more than 10 Gigawatts of solar projects, and a first project is being launched in Mozambique with the support of France and the European Union. She further announced that, in the frame of the ISA Star-C programme, the French National Institute for Solar Energy (INES) will very soon launch a specific programme for the small island states of the Pacific.
The President of COP26, Alok Sharma, recalled the commitment of the United Kingdom to fight climate change. The UK planned to phase out coal within the next five years and to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The COP26 President invited all the Members to participate in the global climate summit on December 12 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Sharma stressed the UK's three commitments to the ISA — providing a platform for the ISA during the COP26, supporting a feasibility study on the implementation of a World Solar Bank, and assisting the ISA Secretariat on the implementation of the One Sun One World One Grid initiative by providing human and financial resources.
For the first time since the inception of the framework agreement of ISA, solar awards were conferred on countries of the region as well as institutions working for solar. The assembly witnessed the conferment of the Visvesvaraya award which recognises countries with maximum floating solar capacity in each of the four regions of the ISA. The awards went to Japan for the Asia Pacific region and the Netherlands for Europe and other regions.
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