India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with France to cooperate in the field of renewable energy.

Through the signed MoU, the two countries will work to establish a cooperative institutional relationship to promote technical bilateral cooperation on renewable energy issues.

Both sides will collaborate on mutually identified areas through research, demonstration, and pilot projects between India’s National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) and France’s Commissariat aI’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA).

Additionally, both France and India will work for the implementation and deployment of pilot projects in International Solar Alliance (ISA) member countries.

The two countries will collaborate through joint research projects, joint research and development (R&D), joint workshops, research and technology exchange including exchange of domain experts.

This builds on the momentum of last month, in which India signed two MoUs with Morocco and Guyana in which the participant countries agreed to cooperate for the expansion of renewable energy.

Mercom also recently reported that after initiating and founding the ISA jointly with France, India entered bilateral agreements with Fiji and Greece to further the development of renewable energy generation and reduce their collective carbon footprint for a sustainable future.

These agreements reflect India’s desire to strengthen its leadership role in climate action and its ability to bring tangible changes via the ISA. The ISA became a juridical personality in March 2018 following the signing of a Host Country Agreement with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

India ratified the Paris Climate Accord in October 2016, setting a goal to generate 40 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources.

India currently is the third largest solar market in the world and installed close to 10 GW of solar in 2017.

Image credit: Kremlin.ru [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons