New Delhi: The International Solar Alliance ( ISA ) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development ( EBRD ) today signed a Joint Financial Partnership Declaration with the objective to deepen their cooperation on renewable energy.Speaking on the occasion, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said India has been in the forefront of the 42-nation ISA. “India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has pledged unequivocal commitment for furthering the cause of new and renewable energy since the Paris COP21 UN Climate Change Conference,” Jaitley said.The deceleration for the promotion of solar energy was signed by Upendra Tripathy, Interim Director General of ISA and Nandita Parshad, Managing Director of EBRD for energy and natural resources. Ministry of New & Renewable Energy Secretary Anand Kumar , French Ambassador Alexandre Ziegler and EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti were also present on the occasion.ISA was initially proposed by PM Modi and launched at the India Africa Summit ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015. India has committed to host ISA Secretariat for five years between 2016 and 2021. It will also contribute $27 million to the ISA for creating corpus, building infrastructure and recurring expenditure.“ISA needs to firm-up such financial partnership deals with more multilateral and bilateral donor agencies in order to meet its stated objectives of getting better technology; aiding easier costing to improve affordability of solar energy,” Jaitley said, adding that both the signing parties should go in for innovation of new and dynamic mechanism for credit enhancement and risk mitigation in the solar sector.ISA is working for deployment of over 1,000 GW of solar energy and mobilising more than $1,000 billion into solar energy by the year 2030. “The collaboration will provide an opportunity to EBRD to support solar energy investment in the least developed countries, especially in Africa. This will also help funding of solar projects both in African and other countries,” Upendra Tripathy, Interim Director General ISA said.EBRD is keenly interested to increase its green financing portfolio to 40 per cent of its annual business, the ministry of finance said in a statement. Till date, the EBRD has invested more than €4 billion directly in renewable energy, supporting projects in over 20 countries and funding more than 6.5 GW of capacity, the statement added.