International Solar Alliance's headquarters agreement signed

Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs Gen (Retd) Vijay Kumar Singh and interim Director General of International Solar Alliance Upendra Tripathy on Monday signed a headquarters agreement to lay the foundation of the solar energy framework at a global level.

The agreement marks India's continued commitment to the goals of ISA as outlined in the founding summit held at New Delhi two weeks ago.

Various other members of external affairs ministry and ISA attended the event.

At the event, Gen. VK Singh said, "India has taken a lead in (ISA Summit). When the founding conference was held at the Rashtrapati Bhawan culture centre out of 121 countries who were eligible to get into ISA, 62 have expressed their willingness, 32 have ratified the framework agreement."

He further reflected upon the efforts to increase the production of solar energy to175 Gigawatts to help the prices of solar energy per unit to come down and reduce the storage space required by the solar power.

Meanwhile, Tripathy went on to dwell upon the laws to be made as part of the ISA.

"We are talking about 1,000 billion dollar investment in the solar sector and 1,000 Gigawatt of solar energy in the member countries. We shall make laws that enable the treaty-based organisations to conduct research. We will try our best bring a solar revolution to get affordable solar energy everywhere," Tripathy said.

Further, Minister of State for Power and New and Renewable Energy Raj Kumar Singh informed that the solar energy would be provided at affordable rates of 3.5 US cents per unit.

The founding conference of the alliance was held in New Delhi on March 11.

As per the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1986 Headquarters Agreement includes legally binding agreements between states and International Organisations as well as between other global organisations.