India and Germany on Monday signed an agreement on technical cooperation under the Indo-German Energy Programme – Green Energy Corridors (IGEN-GEC).

The agreement was signed by India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH India on behalf of Germany. An official statement said that the main objective of this programme component is to improve the sector framework and conditions for grid integration of renewable energy.

In 2013, Germany had decided to provide concessional loans of up to 1 billion euro through KfW (German Development Bank). In addition, it had offered to lend up to 10 million euro under technical assistance in forecasting, balancing, market design, network management and demand side energy efficiency implemented by GIZ.

These contributions have been further increased in 2015 and 2016 through concessional loans of up to 400 million euro for transmission infrastructure. Germany also provides a loan of 7 million euro for training activities in the photovoltaic solar rooftop sector and energy efficiency in residential buildings under technical assistance through GIZ.