Topics Covered:
- Important International institutions, agencies and fora, their structure, mandate.
- Infrastructure- energy.
International Solar Alliance
What to study?
- For Prelims: ISA- key facts, overview of the proposed new bank for funding.
- For Mains: Need for a bank for financing energy access- need, challenges and potential.
Context: The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is going to propose a new bank exclusively for financing energy access to billions.
The proposal- The bank is still at the ideation stage:
- ISA has asked the Asian Development Bank to prepare a concept note.
- A public-private partnership is being thought of for the proposed, which will work for 1.2 billion people who lack access to energy as well as the 2.4 billion who lack access to clean energy.
Need:
Existing banks do not focus on universal energy access—those still deprived are the poorest of the poor; thus, out of the ambit of these banks. Therefore, we need special finance mechanism which can target these people.
About ISA:
The Paris Declaration establishes ISA as an alliance dedicated to the promotion of solar energy among its member countries.
Objectives: 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.
What it does? As an action-oriented organisation, 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 it entered into force? 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.
Sources: down to earth.
Mains Question: Examine the key objectives of the International Solar Alliance and the challenges it faces?
