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Need for an alliance to reap the solar potential
Despite the significant potential and opportunities for reaping the solar energy potential, and the geographic and socio-economic advantages, there exists an anomaly amongst countries in harnessing solar power. This situation runs the risk of a ‘solar divide’, where developing and less developed countries are not able to participate in the fruits of green growth that developed countries are pursuing, creating a paradoxical situation where the countries rich in solar resources are not in a position to harness their resources, while the countries with relatively less solar resources are in a position to do so.
The Government of India took the initiative to bridge the ‘solar divide’ by launching the International Solar Alliance (ISA), along with France, in November 2015, at the sidelines of COP21 in Paris. The ISA has been conceived as a coalition of 121 solar resources rich countries endowed with almost 300 days of sunlight a year, located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The initiative was to create a platform to collaborate on addressing the identified gaps through a common, agreed approach besides addressing the special energy needs. The Alliance through its Charter, intends to mobilize more than US$ 1000 billion of investments by 2030 for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy.
An important aspect that this Alliance will look forward to achieving will be setting up of more off-grid solar. A large part of the African countries are devout of transmission lines and accessing power hence becomes a challenge.
The ISA has also proposed setting up a US$ 300 billion Global Solar Fund over 10 years with contributions from the World Bank, Overseas Development Assurances and from the Green Climate Fund to leverage US$ 3,000 billion in investment from the corporate sector.
A concept document is being developed to create a common guarantee fund and develop guarantee investments with a clear scope, delimitation of risk coverage and recourse options. The objective is to reduce transaction costs to mobilise the investment volumes necessary for scaling up solar energy projects. Read more….