India today congratulated Egypt for signing the framework agreement of the International Solar Alliance, a treaty-based global body for promotion of solar energy in alliance with 121 countries.
India and France are co-hosting the first International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit to be held in New Delhi tomorrow to promote solar energy.
The summit will be attended by the heads of state from 23 nations, including France, Australia and Sri Lanka.
India's Ambassador to Egypt Sanjay Bhattacharyya congratulated Egyptian Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker who signed the framework agreement at a ceremony held at his office today.
"Over 61 countries have joined the ISA and will participate at the Founding Conference of ISA in New Delhi tomorrow," Bhattacharyya said.
He said with Egypt joining the ISA, there will be growing opportunities for cooperation in the field of solar projects, including in the financing of projects in Egypt under India's Line of Credit (LOC) programme.
"There can be cooperation for projects in Arab countries and Africa," Bhattacharyya said.
ISA is aimed at increasing the use of renewable energy, especially solar energy, to address the issues faced by climate change.
The primary objective of the alliance is to work for efficient exploitation of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
The initiative was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India Africa Summit, and a meeting of member countries ahead of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015.
India has set an ambitious target of having 100 GW of solar energy capacities by 2022. It is close to achieving 20 GW in the current fiscal itself and plans to auction 30 GW solar projects each in 2018-19 and 2019-20.
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