India and France Launch International Solar Energy Alliance at COP21
India and France have launched an International Solar Alliance to boost solar energy in developing countries.
The initiative was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris on 30 November by Indian Prime Minister Narendera Modi and French President Francois Hollande.
The alliance includes around 120 countries that support the “Declaration on the occasion to launch the international solar alliance of countries dedicated to the promotion of solar energy”.
President Hollande acknowledged that developing countries need technology and capacity building to quickly take solar energy to scale, and that initial public financing is important for solar energy to take hold in developing countries.
Prime Minsiter Modi said that he was encouraged by the industry support show so far for solar energy and that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the launch, said that the climate change agreement that will be concluded in Paris at COP21 must send a clear enough signal to investors to encourage the scaling up of solar and other renewable forms of energy and urged all the governments meeting in Paris to work in a spirit of cooperation and compromise to conclude an effective agreement.
Declaration on the occasion to launch the international solar alliance of countries dedicated to the promotion of solar energy
Recognizing that sustainable development, universal energy access, and energy security are critical to the shared prosperity and future of our planet, and acknowledging that clean and renewable energy needs to be made affordable for all, we do hereby declare our intention to support India’s proposal to launch an international solar alliance as a common platform for cooperation among solar resource rich countries lying fully or practically between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.
United by a shared vision to bring clean, affordable and renewable energy within the reach of all, we affirm our intention to join the international solar alliance as founding members to ensure the promotion of green, clean and sustainable energy, and to draw on the beneficence of the Sun in this endeavor.
We share the collective ambition to undertake innovative and concerted efforts with a view to reducing the cost of finance and cost of technology for immediate deployment of competitive solar generation assets in all our countries and to pave the way for future solar generation, storage and good technologies adapted to our countries’’ individual needs.
United by our objective to significantly augment solar power generation in our countries, we intend making joint efforts through innovative policies, projects, programmes, capacity building measures and financial instruments to mobilize more than 1000 Billion US Dollars of investments that are needed by 2030 for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy. We recognize that the reduced cost of finance would enable us to undertake more ambitious solar energy programmes to bring development and prosperity for our people.
We intend working together towards the development of appropriate benchmarks, facilitating resource assessments, supporting research and development and demonstration facilities, with a view to encouraging innovative and affordable applications of solar technologies.
Desirous of establishing an international alliance of countries dedicated to the promotion of solar energy as an effective mechanism of cooperation, we agree to create an International Steering Committee, open to interested counties, to provide the necessary guidance, direction and advice to establish the international solar alliance.
