Sunshine countries

International Solar Alliance

World map with the torrid zone, the area between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, highlighted in red.
Abbreviation	ISA (International Solar Alliance)
Type	International Group
Legal status	Active
Purpose	Bring together a group of nations to endorse clean energy, sustainable environment, public transport and climate
Headquarters	Gwal Pahari, Gurugram, Haryana, India
Location	Announced at Paris Climate Summit
Region served	countries between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn
Website	intsolaralliance.org

The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is an alliance of more than 120 countries, most of them being sunshine countries, which come either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The alliance's primary objective is work for efficient exploitation of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. This initiative was first proposed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a speech in November 2015 at Wembley Stadium, in which he referred to sunshine countries as suryaputra ("sons of the sun"). The alliance is a treaty-based inter-governmental organization. Countries that do not fall within the Tropics can join the ISA and enjoy all benefits as other members, with the exception of voting rights.

The initiative was launched by Modi at the India Africa Summit, and a meeting of member countries ahead of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015. The Framework Agreement of the International Solar Alliance opened for signatures in Marrakech, Morocco in November 2016, and 121 countries have joined.

The ISA is to be headquartered in India. In January 2016, Narendra Modi, and the French President François Hollande jointly laid the foundation stone of the ISA Headquarters and inaugurated the interim Secretariat of the ISA at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gwalpahari, Gurugram. The Indian government has dedicated five acres of land on the NISE campus for ISA's future headquarters; it also has contributed ₹1.75 billion (US$27 million) to the fund to build the ISA campus and for meeting expenditures for the ISA's first five years.