The International Solar Alliance (ISA) introduced its Five-Year Strategy 20272031 at the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Türkiye, setting out how the Alliance will help Member Countries move from climate commitments to solar deployment at scale. ISA presented its platforms, partnerships and institutional capabilities as practical channels for the COP31 Presidency’s Climate Implementation Bridge, which seeks to connect national climate priorities with investment-ready projects across solar energy, energy storage and digitised grids.
Global solar capacity has grown from around 200 GW in 2015 to 3 TW today, yet financing, institutional and capability constraints continue to keep deployment uneven across developing countries. ISA designed the Strategy around a central question: what will it take to enable 6 TW of global solar deployment by 2031, while ensuring that this growth delivers lasting benefits for countries, economies and communities.
Shaped by an external organisational readiness assessment and consultations with more than 50 stakeholders, the Strategy anchors ISA’s work in three evolved priorities: Accelerating Energy Access, Energy for Development, and Energy Security and Resilience. ISA will bring together its four institutional pillars, the Catalytic Finance Hub, the Global Capability Centre and Digitisation, Regional and Countrylevel Engagement, and Technology Roadmaps and Policy, to strengthen country readiness, aggregate demand, harmonise standards and mobilise finance and partnerships. The Strategy also harnesses opportunities in AI, digitalisation and interconnected energy systems, and responds to the aggregation needs of Member Countries, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Mr Ashish Khanna, Director General, International Solar Alliance, said, “The world has made the case for solar. The task now is to build the ecosystem that enables its deployment at scale, through grid digitisation, integrated energy planning, energy storage and institutional capacity building. Our Five-Year Strategy 2027-2031 sharpens ISA’s focus on what countries need to turn ambition into projects. ISA will advance integrated solutions that combine solar with storage, flexible grids and sound regulation, and will advocate local currency financing, backed by guarantees and risk-mitigation instruments, as a standard feature of solar finance in developing economies. Through these efforts, ISA aims to ensure that the growth of solar makes energy more affordable, economies more resilient and opportunities more widely shared. ISA will serve as a practical bridge between global climate goals and national implementation. As COP31 places implementation at the centre of its agenda, ISA stands ready to work with the Climate Implementation Bridge so that solar’s next leap delivers affordable, reliable and secure energy for communities across our Member Countries.”
ISA’s platforms already show how the Bridge can work in practice. Through the ISA SIDS Platform, ISA brought 18 island states together around a shared pipeline of approximately USD 500 million in solar and storage projects and, in partnership with the World Bank Group, supported Mauritius on its 220 MW solarplus-storage tender. The USD 200 million Africa Solar Facility, developed with Africa50, the World Bank Group, SE4ALL and the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, will provide flexible, long-term finance to companies bringing decentralised renewable energy to communities. SHINE, ISA’s Global Capability Centre, together with the AI-enabled ISA Academy and 17 Solar Technology Application Resource Centres (STAR-Cs), will equip policymakers, engineers and entrepreneurs with capabilities and institutional ecosystem needed to drive performance and accelerate solar deployment.
