PM urges all members of UN to join International Solar Alliance

All members of the United Nations should join the India-France led International Solar Alliance said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a letter addressed to the First World Solar Technology Summit, Modi said, "The membership of International Solar Alliance has now been opened for all the member countries of United Nations. I strongly urge all Nations to protect mother earth and scale-up uses of solar energy as a tool against climate change."

"India has the lowest per capita carbon emissions in the world, but we have still pressed ahead with the deployment of renewable energy," Modi said in his letter that was read out by Minister for Power, and New and Renewable Energy, R K Singh.

Also speaking at the summit, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan said that Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and GAIL (India) Limited will be contributing to ISA’s Corpus Fund.

Pradhan also said that India's oil and gas companies are making efforts to deploy solar panels across the value chain of their operations. Their current installed solar power capacity is 270 MW.

“Additional 60 MW solar capacity will be added in the coming year. We have taken up the mission of solarizing about 50 per cent of fuel stations owned by Public Sector oil companies in the next five years," Pradhan said.

There were several partnership agreements signed by the ISA at the summit. These included a deal between ISA and Global Green Growth Institute (Republic of Korea) on the promotion of 1 million solar pumps, and one between ISA and the International Institute for Refrigeration, Paris.

An agreement on implementation of 47 projects between ISA and India's NTPC and one between the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, World Bank, and ISA on the One Sun One World, One Grid initiative was also signed.

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