Delhi Holds Eighth Standing Committee Meeting Of International Solar Alliance

New Delhi [India]: The eighth meeting of the standing committee of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) was held here in the national capital this week.

The meeting, held on Tuesday, was chaired by Union Minister for Power and New and Renewable Energy RK Singh in his capacity — the current President of the ISA.

International Solar Alliance is an international organisation with 93 Member countries and 115 Signatory countries Some representatives of member countries joined in person in Delhi, while others joined the meeting online, a release by the ministry said.

In his opening remarks, Singh said that the need for an energy transition is now a settled question.

‘Whether the world today needs an energy transition is no longer in question. Rather, the question is how to achieve it, and how soon. A new global energy economy is emerging, with the rapid growth of renewables as the alternative source of energy,’ Singh said.

‘The development of solar energy is one of the major contributors for achieving energy transition. The cumulative global solar PV capacity has reached approximately 942 GW since the last decade.

The solar PV market maintained its record-breaking streak with new capacity installations totalling ~175 GW in 2021. With every progressing year, solar is becoming the more dominant renewable energy generation technology as the world moves towards net zero,’ he added.

Further, he particularly focused on access to clean energy in less developed nation.
‘We cannot address this challenge unless and until we help the least developed countries to get access to clean energy, to make the energy transition. This has been recognized decades back, but we have not seen any conclusions coming forward. For the world to get to Net Zero, it will not happen by just a few countries getting to Net Zero. We need to ask our conscience whether we are doing enough.’

The Minister told member countries that while some green funds have been set up across the world, the alliance needs to ask those green funds to channel some of those funds to African countries.