The World Bank, which is committed to improving people's living conditions, announced on June 30 that it would provide a loan of US $1 billion for the International Solar Alliance (ISA) to assist in the development of solar power generation in India. This is the World Bank's largest solar investment to date.
ISA was established by Indian Prime Minister Modi during the 2015 Paris Climate Summit in conjunction with 121 countries. The purpose is to promote solar power generation around the world, with the goal of securing an investment of US $1 trillion by 2030. The World Bank has officially become a financial partner of the ISA and has provided a $1 billion loan to help India develop solar energy in 2017. Between 2015 and 2016, the World Bank has provided India with $4.8 billion in funding.
The Indian government plans to increase domestic solar installations to 100GW by 2022 and increase renewable energy generation to 40% of the national power generation. India has an average of 300 days of sunshine every year, with more than 1,500 hours of sunshine per year. The sunshine radiation is high and the sunshine resources are abundant. World Bank President JimYongKim said at the signing ceremony: "In addition to climate change issues, people will choose solar energy because it is cheaper; and installing solar panels is much faster than building coal-fired power plants." Explain the World Bank's rationale for investing in an ISA.
In fact, India has already started the construction of the world's largest solar power plant-a 2GW super-large power station in Karnataka, generating enough power for 1 million households.
The World Bank's $1 billion million investment will be used to develop technologies such as rooftop solar energy, large-scale solar parks, hybrid uses of solar energy and its applications, and grid transmission. The World Bank will also begin to study the establishment of a solar energy financing mechanism to promote the development and use of solar power generation equipment.
At the same time, the World Bank and the Indian government signed a $0.625 billion "rooftop solar grid project" to provide financing for the installation of at least 400MW rooftop solar systems throughout India. The International Financial Organization (IFC) under the World Bank will also assist Madhya Pradesh in developing a 750MW large power station in Rewa, which is expected to attract 0.75 billion US dollars of investment.
The signing ceremony was held in New Delhi and was attended by JimYongKim, Indian Energy Commissioner PiyushGoyal, Finance Commissioner ArunJaitley and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
