Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) are jointly organizing a virtual event on Enabling Finance for Distributed Renewable Energy in India. India has set an aggressive target to install 450 GW of renewable energy projects by 2030, under the larger purview of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). To achieve India’s ambitious RE targets in the decade of action, significant capacity addition of distributed renewable energy (DRE) projects will be crucial. The DRE projects are potentially more scalable, have lesser execution challenges, and have substantiative co-benefits with multiple downstream applications.

India will require an annual DRE investment of USD 18 billion by 2024 to achieve the targets set for the sector. However, financing of DRE projects has been one of the major challenges in scaling up. The US-India Clean Energy Finance (USICEF) facility is India’s first project preparation facility for distributed solar, and is managed by CPI. Since 2017, USICEF has successfully mobilized about USD 200 million in debt financing to DRE projects.

CPI will provide an overview of the USICEF facility, examine the current challenges and outline the way ahead for accelerated mobilization of DRE financing. It would be followed by a high-level panel discussion on enabling finance for distributed renewable energy in India. The panel will discuss the new energy innovations, upcoming business models, regulatory interventions and de-risking instruments required to unlock capital for DRE scale up in India.