According to a White House Fact Sheet released this month, the United States and India are cooperating on key issues to support the Government of India’s goal to deploy 175 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2022.
These are:
Rooftop Solar: The two governments announced plans to extend their successful cooperation on rooftop solar to three new Indian states to improve utilities’ capacity to scale up.
Grid integration: The United States and India are taking significant steps to enable large-scale integration of renewable energy into India’s power grid through the Greening the Grid initiative. These include a first-in-class national study of strategies to transform India’s grid, a new $18 million contract to implement renewable integration strategies, a new $4.7 million initiative to pilot new technology for balancing the power grid, and two new partnerships between U.S. and Indian electricity regulators and grid operators.
Solar Resource Data: The countries are also collaborating to enhance the quality and accuracy of India’s solar resource maps and data to help developers and policymakers identify high-quality, bankable solar energy projects.
In addition two commitments announced should result in a near doubling of current installed solar energy in India:
1. California-based 8minutenergy Renewables will pursue a 4 GW solar photovoltaic project pipeline in India to help meet the Indian government’s renewable energy goals. These utility-scale solar projects are expected to generate over 10,000 Indian construction jobs in total. Tom Buttgenbach, president and co-founder of 8minutenergy commented, “We are dedicated to bridging U.S-India partnerships across the development spectrum – from financing to project construction and operations – in order to make this pipeline a reality. We will bring cutting-edge technology and deployment solutions, including many U.S.-designed solar and storage options, to our global energy projects.” 8minutenergy will also contribute to the Clean Energy Finance Forum, which provides private sector support to the U.S.-India Clean Energy Finance Task Force that will explore innovative bilateral approaches to clean energy financing.
2. In support of the Indian government’s renewable energy goals, SunLink Corporation, another California-based company, is partnering with domestic Indian companies with a deployment target of 1.4GW over the next five years. With this approach, SunLink will help stimulate domestic Indian manufacturing and construction jobs, and its technology will help the country realize its renewable energy goals on an accelerated timeline.
Mobilizing Investment for Clean Energy: Through Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE), the United States and India have mobilized over $2.5 billion since 2009 to support clean energy deployment. The two nations announced the creation of two innovative new initiatives that together are expected to mobilize up to $1.4 billion in climate finance for Indian solar projects.
EXIM Bank-IREDA Memorandum of Understanding: The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM Bank) will continue its partnership with the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) to identify opportunities for financing made-in-America renewable energy and energy efficiency exports in support of India’s clean energy goals. The EXIM Bank also confirms its willingness to engage IREDA in discussions focused on new potential financing structures, including those that do not contemplate a sovereign guarantee, in order to boost U.S. exports to India in this sector.
These initiatives complement the ongoing cooperation between the United States and India on off grid energy access, specifically the Promoting Energy Access through Clean Energy (PACE) program. In May 2016, the two governments announced the first nine recipients of off-grid innovation funding through the joint $7.9 million PACEsetter Fund. And the new investment initiatives announced complement the Energy Access Investment Readiness Initiative, a public/private partnership launched in 2015 to mobilize $41 million to incubate off-grid enterprises.
Energy Efficiency: The United States and India are updating the Energy Conservation Building Code and supporting comprehensive state-level policies for the current framework, while making significant progress on space cooling collaboration.
