PM Modi Presents 10-Point Action Plan at Solar Summit With French President Macron

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday called for concessional financing and less-risky funds for solar projects to raise the share of solar power in the energy basket, provide cheaper electricity and cut carbon emissions.

Speaking at the founding conference of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), he said India will generate 175 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2022.

This would be more than double the present renewable energy capacity and would be enough to overtake renewable expansion in the European Union for the first time.

Modi, the chief architect of ISA that seeks to bring together 121 nations, presented 10 action points including making affordable solar technology available to all nations, raising the share of electricity generated from photovoltaic cells in the energy mix and framing regulations and standards to support the initiative.

He said better and cheaper solar technology should be easily available to all nations. "We have to increase the share of solar in energy mix," he said.

Also, innovation has to be encouraged so as to provide solutions to different needs. "We have to provide concessional financing and less-risky funds for solar projects," he said.

ISA, headquartered in Gurgaon near here, is now a treaty-based inter-governmental organisation that was established following the Paris Declaration as an alliance dedicated to the promotion of solar energy among its member countries.

The Prime Minister said of the 121 countries associated with ISA, 61 have joined the alliance and 32 have ratified the Framework Agreement.

Indian 'vedas' have since thousands of years considered sun as at soul of the universe and a nourisher of life. "We have to look at this ancient balanced and all-encompassing philosophy when when we today look for ways to deal with the challenge of climate change," he said.

Modi had in a speech at London's Wembley Stadium in 2015 proposed the idea of an inter-governmental organisation comprising of 121 countries, which lie either completely or partly between the two tropics, with an aim to promote solar energy.

ISA was launched by him at the India Africa Summit in New Delhi and the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in October 2015 and November 2015, respectively.

On Sunday, heads of 23 nations and 10 ministerial representatives gathered here for alliance's first summit. The summit was co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Speaking on the occasion, Macron said USD 1 trillion will be needed to achieve one terawatt (TW) of solar power capacity by 2030.

"The development of solar energy will not just lead to our prosperity, but will also reduce the carbon footprint of the earth," Modi said on Sunday.

Stating that better and affordable solar technology is available to all must be ensured, he said, results would be even better if other forms of energy are linked to solar.

Solar energy can have a variety of uses - agriculture, solar water pumps, clean cooking. "We need to encourage innovation in the solar energy sector to find different uses for it," he said.