Context: Recently, India and France were re-elected as President and Co- President of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) for a term of 2 years at the third assembly of the ISA.

• Four new Vice-Presidents were also chosen to represent the four regions of ISA.

The representatives who assumed the vice presidency were:

• Fiji & Nauru for Asia Pacific Region;
• Mauritius & Niger for Africa Region;
• UK & Netherlands for Europe and others Region,
• Cuba and Guyana for Latin America and Caribbean Regio

The Assembly also approved the initiatives of the ISA Secretariat in institutionalizing ISA’s engagement with the private and public corporate sector through the Coalition for Sustainable Climate Action (CSCA).
Key highlights

• The President of the ISA Assembly – India’s Power and New and Renewable Energy Minister – said that Solar energy is already contributing around 2.8% of global electricity, and if trends were to continue, by 2030, solar will become most important source of energy for electricity production in large part of the world.
• The ISA assembly was presented the report prepared by the World Resources Institute (WRI) which identifies the sources of funds, opportunities and constraints, in scaling up solar investments and the contribution of ISA in assisting Member countries.
• Recently ISA has initiated programmes for segregation of demand for around 50 million Home Power Systems which will not only meet subsistence energy needs of the rural households but will also contribute to improving health services and availability of portable water.
• ISA has aggregated a demand for more than 270,000 solar pumps across 22 countries, more than 1 GW of Solar Rooftop across 11 countries, and more than 10GW of Solar Mini-grids across 9 countries under its respective programmes.
• A robust pipeline of more than US$ 5 Billion has been developed for solar energy applications to meet lighting, irrigation, drinking water and productive energy requirement of the ISA member countries, which have so far been largely deprived of modern energy services.

International Solar Alliance (ISA)

• The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is an alliance of 121 countries initiated by India, most of them being sunshine countries, which lie either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
• It is headquartered in India.
• The focus is on solar power utilization.
• The primary objective of the alliance is to work for efficient exploitation of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
• This initiative was first proposed by Indian Prime Minister, and was announced during COP21 held in Paris in 2015.
• The alliance is a treaty-based inter-governmental organization. Countries that do not fall within the Tropics can join the alliance and enjoy all benefits as other members, with the exception of voting rights.
• After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states world-wide.