Second Assembly of ISA

• 31 Oct 2019

The second assembly of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) is being hosted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy from 30^th-31^st October 2019.

• The Assembly is the supreme decision making body of the ISA, and gives directions on various administrative, financial and programme related issues.
• India (represented by the Minister for New and Renewable Energy and Power) is the President and France is the Co-President of the ISA Assembly.
• Till now, 81 countries of the 121 prospective member countries have signed the Framework Agreement of the ISA. Of these, 58 countries have ratified the same.
  
  • During the first Assembly of the ISA, an Indian resolution to extend the Membership of the organisation to all countries that are Members of the United Nations was adopted.
• Since the first assembly on 3^rd October 2018, ISA has initiated many activities and programmes.
  
  • For building domestic capacity of the ISA member countries programmes such as STAR - C Programme, development of the Infopedia etc. have been launched.
    
    • STAR C is a Solar Technology Application Resource Centre project.
    • Infopedia is an online platform dedicated to the dissemination of information, best practices and knowledge on Solar Energy.
  • The ISA sent country missions to eight countries over the course of 2019 in order to understand the challenges and issues ‘on the ground’.
  • ISA has significantly extended outreach and have partnered with over 40 organizations. These broadly include United Nations (UN), Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), etc.

International Solar Alliance

• The ISA, is an Indian initiative that was launched by the Prime Minister of India and the President of France on 30^th November 2015 in Paris, France on the side-lines of the Conference of the Parties (COP-21), with 121 solar resource rich countries lying fully or partially between the tropic of Cancer and tropic of Capricorn as prospective members.
• The overarching objective of the ISA is to collectively address key common challenges to the scaling up of solar energy in ISA member countries.
• The Government of India has allotted 5 acres of land to the ISA in National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) campus, Gurugram and has released a sum of Rs. 160 crore for creating a corpus fund, building infrastructure and meeting day to day recurring expenditure of the ISA up to the year 2021-22.

Source: PIB