Five Indian PSUs join International Solar Alliance (ISA)’s Coalition for Sustainable Climate Action (ISA-CSCA) as Corporate Partners.

Five Public Sector Undertakings under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas announced to join International Solar Alliance (ISA)’s Coalition for Sustainable Climate Action (ISA-CSCA) as Corporate Partners.

Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, in his inaugural speech at the first World Solar Technology Summit, announced that ONGC, IOCL, BPCL, HPCL, and GAIL (India) Limited would be contributing to ISA's corpus fund.

Pradhan said, "To reduce carbon footprint, these companies will be focusing more on green energy investments such as renewables, biofuels, and hydrogen going forward. We are also actively encouraging industry in general, and oil and gas companies particularly become participants to this solar transition.”

About International Solar Alliance (ISA)

ISA is a joint initiative of France and India and launched during COP21 to increase the deployment of solar energy technologies in developing member countries.

The ISA has 122 sun-belt countries that lie between the two tropics as its prospective member countries and currently boasts a membership of 86 countries globally dedicated to the promotion of solar energy. It is headquartered in Gurugram, India.

Current Developments

Indian oil and gas companies will be working closely with International Solar Alliance to explore opportunities for implementing solar-based projects within India and other developing nations, where the International solar alliance has been focusing on the faster development of solar energy infrastructure.

Oil PSUs are contributing funds to ISA's corpus to drive the growth of solar energy adoption. PSUs also planned to deploy solar panels across the value chain of their operations, and the current installed solar power capacity is 270 MW. They plan to add 60 MW solar capacity in the coming year.

Though it is still unclear how much these five PSUs will contribute to the ISA corpus, several other PSUs like NTPC, REC, Coal India Ltd, PGCIL, and PFC have donated a million dollars towards the ISA's corpus in the past.

Way Ahead

PSU's under this mission pledged to solarize about 50 percent of fuel stations owned by them in the next five years. Around 5,000 fuel stations of IOCL, the largest Public Sector oil marketing company, were solarized in 2019. 

IOCL has tied up with M/s Sun Bucket System, a US-based start-up working in the niche area of solar energy-based products for developing low-cost indoor solar cooking solutions.