Being a global platform, ISA’s partnerships with multilateral development banks (MDBs), development financial institutions (DFIs), private and public sector organizations, civil society, and other international institutions is key to delivering the change it seeks to see in the world going ahead.
The ISA is guided by its ‘Towards 1000’ strategy which aims to mobilize $1,000 billion of investments in solar energy solutions by 2030 while delivering energy access to 1,000 million people using clean energy solutions and resulting in the installation of 1,000 GW of solar energy capacity. This would help mitigate global solar emissions to the tune of 1,000 million tonnes of CO2 every year.
For meeting these goals, the ISA takes a programmatic approach. Currently, the ISA has nine comprehensive programs, each focusing on a distinct application that could help scale the deployment of solar energy solutions.
Activities under the programs focus on four priority areas – Analytics & Advocacy, Capacity Building, Programmatic Support, readiness, and enabling activities, that help create a favorable environment for solar energy investments to take root in the country.
The task is not easy. But it is achievable and necessary. “If you add up all the net-zero commitments made by countries in Glasgow, solar technology applications provide more than 50 percent of the solution. And if you add hydrogen to it, if you add storage, heating, and cooling, the offering of solar as a solution goes about 65 percent. It’s well established among the top leaders, thinkers, modelers, industry people who are doing forecasting that we need to harness solar technology in a much bigger way to solve the energy transition problem if we are serious about this,” says Jagjeet Sareen of ISA.
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The pandemic has underlined the ISA’s potential to shape the global development of a solar-powered vaccine logistics network to replace the kerosene-based absorption refrigerators</div>
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The ISA has also partnered with World Bank to launch ‘Global Solar Atlas’ in an event at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. ‘Global Solar Atlas’ is a free online means that presents yearly average solar power potential at any place in the world and therefore recognizes possible places for solar power creation.
Another Indian initiative through ISA to promote the “One Sun, One World and One Grid global” (OSOWOG) project recently received a fillip when India and UK signed a partnership to create the world’s first interconnected solar grid.
The Covid-19 epidemic has confronted ISA with a challenge, but it has also opened a new window of opportunity for harnessing solar power for the benefit of low-development countries. While the slowdown in the global economy affected fund flows, there are signs that things are improving. Last November, the ISA has established a partnership with Nordic institutional investors to mobilize $1 trillion for investment in solar. The pandemic has also underlined the ISA’s potential to shape the global development of a solar-powered vaccine logistics network to replace the kerosene-based absorption refrigerators.
This is good news for India which is attempting to establish itself as a responsible global leader, spreading its medicine diplomacy far and wide. It case use ISA to push for the development of low-cost sustainable cooling infrastructure. A sustainable, last-mile vaccine delivery mechanism in the continent will not only help in faster recovery from Covid-19 but will establish India as a long-term development partner in the region.
