Minister Barbara Pompili at 3rd Assembly of the International Solar Alliance

New Delhi, 14 October 2020

Honourable Minister, dear Raj Kumar Singh,
Ministers,
Dear colleagues,
Dear friends,

I am sorry that I cannot be with you live.
But I wanted to share this message with you. First of all, to warmly thank India, the Secretariat of the International Solar Alliance, and to thank you, Minister Singh for organising this third assembly.

France is honoured to co-chair this meeting, and I know that we share a lot. Indeed, we share the same vision of multilateralism: strong, ambitious and concrete.

We all know that only cooperation between us, between our societies, between our States will enable us to meet the challenge of the century: the ecological crisis.

And the response to the pandemic is an historic opportunity to accelerate it together. The recovery plans that many countries have adopted are a step in this direction and I welcome this, in India of course and in France, too.

In France, we are devoting 30 billion euros over 2 years to accelerate the ecological transition and 8 billion euros over the decade to build and deploy the green energy and technology of tomorrow.

But we need to do even more. This is the ambition and essential role played by the International Solar Alliance: to redirect funding towards renewable energy, particularly in developing countries, and to take up the challenge of energy at the service of all.

We have made great progress. Today, more than 1,000 gigawatts of solar energy are installed worldwide.

And the momentum is accelerating: solar is now the most installed energy source every year.

So, we need to go even further, and I see three priorities for our Alliance:

First, to put solar energy at the heart of all recovery plans.
Secondly, to disseminate knowledge and know-how.
Finally, to define the regulatory and political frameworks that secure the projects.

And you can count tomorrow, as you did yesterday, on France’s commitment!
Yes, you can count on our commitment to finance solar projects in member countries. Out of the 1.5 billion euros of financing between now and 2022 to which President Macron has committed, 1.15 billion has already been committed to concrete projects.
We are also committed to working with the World Bank to mobilise financing. A first project is currently being launched in Mozambique, thanks to the support of the European Union and France. And very soon, the World Bank will mobilise 18 billion dollars in private investment to finance more than 10 gigawatts of solar projects in several countries.

But funding is not everything. It takes solid expertise to develop local value chains. This is why our national solar energy institute will very soon launch a specific program for the small island states of the Pacific.

This is also why France supports the Alliance’s “STAR-C” program to create a network of solar training and testing centres. I call on all Alliance partners to contribute to this.

My dear colleagues, this year we are celebrating the 5th anniversary of our Alliance and of the Paris Agreement. We have come a long way, we are already 69 Member States, but we must now double our efforts. So, I call on all our partners around the world to join the Alliance. So that solar energy is available everywhere.

Thank you very much.