Why is it in news?

In one of its first outreach programmes post-ratification, the ISA hosted a two Day Event ‘International Solar Alliance Forum’ during 17-18^th January, 2018 at the Future World Energy Summit (WFES) 2018.

Details

• The ISA Ministerial was attended by seven Energy Ministers of ISA Member countries. They presented their views on benefits of collaboration, synergies, and knowledge sharing at the international level to scale up solar energy for universal energy access and investing in Innovations, Technology and R&D for solar projects followed by breakout sessions.
• The Future World Energy Summit (WFES) is a signature event of a global initiative, Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, hosted by Masdar scheduled during 15-18^th January, 2018 at Abu Dhabi (UAE). 
• During the ISA event an ISA Pavilion was also set up for dissemination of information about ISA and its activities and programmes. 

About ISA

• The Paris Declaration establishes ISA as an alliance dedicated to the promotion of solar energy among its member countries. The ISA was initiated by India and France. The ISA’s major objectives include global deployment of over 1,000GW of solar generation capacity and mobilisation of investment of over US$ 1000 billion into solar energy by 2030.
• As an action-oriented organisation, the ISA brings together countries with rich solar potential to aggregate global demand, thereby reducing prices through bulk purchase, facilitating the deployment of existing solar technologies at scale, and promoting collaborative solar R&D and capacity building.
• When the ISA Framework Agreement entered into force on December 6^th, 2017, ISA formally became a de-jure treaty based International Intergovernmental Organization, headquartered at Gurugram, India, making it the first de jure trety based organization in the world, which is initiated by India. As of now the ISA Framework Agreement has been signed by 48 countries, with 19 of them also depositing the instruments of ratification with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.