The National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) will soon receive a $100 million loan from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for the development of rooftop solar.

The development comes after GCF approved a $100 million line of credit for the development of solar rooftops by NABARD in India’s commercial, industrial, and residential housing sectors.

GCF is working to help developing countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

This is the first private sector facility proposal approved by GCF for India. Tata Cleantech Capital Limited (TCCL) will execute the grant. NABARD has been named as the Direct Access Entity (DAE) by GCF for channelizing the fund.

NABARD plans to use the GCF grant for projects and programs that promote climate resilience and low emission development.

The GCF grant will contribute to the provision of concessional loan assistance for solar rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems, with a program outlay of $250 million creating the power generation capacity of 250 MW.

With the provided financial assistance, NABARD also plans to create better livelihood opportunities by providing proper energy access for the most vulnerable areas including micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) which have poor energy access.   

The grant is expected to help NABARD modernize Indian agriculture through the utilization of rooftop solar systems. This will ensure constant, continuous power for fixed durations to the agricultural sector which depends heavily on power for its sustenance.

The program would also contribute to the development of a market for solar rooftop financing to meet the government of India’s ambitious target of achieving 40 GW of rooftop solar power by 2022.

India has so far installed nearly 1.6 GW of rooftop solar capacity and it needs to add another 38.4 GW more if it is going to achieve its goal.

A bottom-up analysis performed by Mercom in its 2017 Q4 Solar Market Update found that India’s rooftop installations grew by 56 percent year-over-year to reach a cumulative total of nearly 1.6 GW on December 31, 2017.

Image credit: By Ananth BS (originally posted to Flickr as Annadatha) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons