Technical advisory for the implementation of a credit line for renewable energies in India

Renewable Energy deployment in India has gained momentum over the last five to seven years because of the country’s burgeoning energy needs, increasing fuel prices, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today, India’s grid connected renewable energy capacity surpassed twelve per cent in 2013. Financing of renewable energy projects by banks and FIs has always been a critical issue. The renewable energy finance landscape in India, however, has evolved over the past ten years. IREDA has been a pioneer and a leader in this segment. To further promote the use of new renewable energy sources, the German development bank KfW is cooperating with the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) through a new credit line. IREDA has already been successfully dispersing three lines of credit from KfW for renewable energy projects since 1995.

As part of the accompanying measures for the latest line of credit, adelphi conducted training and organisational development. In particular, the interventions aimed at enabling IREDA to handle growing business volumes in an efficient and profitable way while maintaining IREDA’s leading role in the national market for renewable energies in India. The assignment had four major fields of action: (1) Marketing and Communication, (2) assessment and forecasting of power generation by renewable energy resources, (3) improvement of IREDA technical staff in financial knowledge and (4) capacity building with regard to international practices in solar technologies and solar project finance. The types of intervention were adapted to the particular needs of the individual target group at IREDA. Training measures took place in India and abroad. In order to provide distinct support to IREDA all interventions included international and national expertise from the fields of solar and wind technologies as well as project finance.