Although India’s target for the development of 40 GW rooftop PV, is likely too ambitious to achieve, while having currently only 1.5 GW of installed capacity, a group of international experts has pointed out a solution that could help the country to get close to this target.
In a paper produced in collaboration between Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), and funded by the Swedish Energy Agency as part of its support for the New Climate Economy project, the group of experts claim that municipal financing, via issuance of municipal bonds, may offer a solution to increase debt availability for developers, while reducing project costs by up to 12%.
The authors of the report are proposing a “solar municipal bond model” (SMB), in which Indian municipalities are called to work as aggregators for fund raising for rooftop solar projects. “Funds available through a municipal bond would be disbursed to project developers via a Public Private Partnership (PPP) approach, similar to the Design-Build-Finance and Operate (DBFO) model with the financing activity taken care by municipal corporation or corporate municipal entity (CME)”, the experts asserted in the study.
Municipalities, on the other hand, may have market advantages as funds raisers such as, among others, institutional goals and mandates, access to debt capital markets and debt guarantees, higher credit profiles, and different revenue sources.
The authors of the paper, however, recommend the adoption of “innovative transaction structures” to help Indian municipalities take part in the rooftop PV business. “A particularly attractive structure is where a municipality-owned master special purpose vehicle (SPV) or a corporate municipal entity (CME) would raise the bonds and disburse the proceeds of these bonds to SPVs owned by project developers via capital lease arrangements” they explained.
Author: Emiliano Bellini
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