German development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) has granted a Є130 million (~$142 million) loan to the Indian Ministry of Finance and a Є70 million (~$ 76 million) loan to the State Bank of India (SBI)  recently. The funds will be used to expand solar generation capacity under the Indo-German solar partnership.

SBI will use the funds to refinance solar projects with a total capacity of 180 MW as part of phase III.

The loan extended to the power generation company of Maharashtra through the Ministry of Finance will support both ground-mounted solar systems with a total capacity of 330 MW and transmission lines from solar projects to the nearest substation.

Since the German- Indian partnership began in the year 2017, SBI has received two loans of Є150 million (~$164.13 million) each. In November last year, KfW and SBI had signed a loan of Є150 million (~$164.13 million).

Nearly Є1 billion (~$1.09 billion) of financing has been granted by KfW to India under the Indo-German partnership so far.

“KfW is helping India to expand its solar energy infrastructure with the aim of meeting the country’s rapidly-increasing demand through renewable energies as much as possible. The demand for energy and electricity is increasing due to economic and population growth, urbanization, industrialization and electrification. We wish to support India – as the third largest producer and the second-largest consumer of electrical energy in the world – in contributing to a broadly effective, technically and economically efficient, and socially and environmentally sustainable energy supply,” said Christiane Laibach, Member of the Executive Board of KfW Group.

The projects under the two new loan agreements aim to cut India’s greenhouse gas emissions by 650,000 tons.

As a result of the German-Indian solar partnership and financing by KfW, 4 GW of power generation capacity has been installed, and around 5 million people are supplied with electricity from renewable energy.

Earlier this month, REC Limited, a public infrastructure finance company, signed a loan agreement of Є200 million (~$218 million) with Kfw to reform India’s distribution companies.