The India solar market is super hot — one of the hottest globally — and this is the place to be so UK-based solar developer Lightsource expanded into India.
In terms of large solar projects, India is planning an insane 20 gigawatt (GW) solar tender, which will be the largest solar tender in the history of the world. It wasn’t that long ago when fewer than 20 GW of solar were added across the world each year, so a single solar tender of 20 GW in one market is a bit hard to believe.
India, one of the leading solar countries in terms of installed capacity, currently has 14.7 GW of solar installed (after installing 2.2 GW in the third quarter). In total, India plans to auction 77 GW of solar by March 2020.
Another item that makes India a place to be… is that there are two new green finance instruments available to the solar industry namely — Solar Investment Trusts (SEITs) and Sustainable Energy Bonds (SEBs).
The launch is a partnership with the India Lab’s public and private Lab Members, which includes a long list of big names, including: the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the Ministry of Finance, the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), the Asian Development Bank, ReNew Power, Cyril Armachand Mangladas, HSBC India, KfW Bank, YES Bank, the World Bank, and the development agencies of the French, UK, and US governments, among others.
The International Solar Alliance (ISA) an Indian initiative, jointly launched by the Prime Minister of India and the President of France, on the sidelines of COP-21, has announced a pilot program to guarantee up to $1 billion for solar power project development across the world.
In other words, the program is providing financial guarantees to developers to encourage them to build projects. The expectation is that this pilot program “will attract investments worth $15 billion to set up 20 gigawatts of solar power capacity.”