FICCI collaborates with the Climate Bonds Initiative.

India’s ambitious clean energy goals requires US$160 billion investment over the next five years to be sourced through green bonds, said Pankaj Patel, President of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Speaking at the India-Austria Business Forum in Vienna on 10 May 2017, Patel highlighted the immense potential of green bonds for channeling debt capital funds towards clean energy financing in both Austria and India.

Internationally, India now ranks 7th with green bond issuance of US$2.7 billion in 2016.

Patel highlighted FICCI’s collaboration with the Climate Bonds Initiative in launching the Indian Green Bonds Council in October 2016 with the objective to bring together issuers, investors and rating agencies to propose solutions towards the development of a green bonds market in India.

He also underscored that India can offer the advantages of scale and serve as an attractive clean energy investment destination premised on attractive rates of return and the supporting policy and regulatory push for the expanding the clean energy agenda.

Austria on the other hand can help in bring in the expertise on the technology development and transfer on developing smart grid components, decentralized web-based solution for energy data management.

Delivering a keynote speech at the forum, Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines, highlighted that India needs to put entire solar value chain under quality direction.

He added that the Government will have a policy directive in place on quality of modules (by end of May 2017), followed by solar cells in next 6-7 months and on wafers and poly silicon in the next two years. fii-news.com