NEW DELHI: French Pre­s­ident Emmanuel Mac­ron on Sunday pledged hundreds of millions of dollars for solar projects in developing countries, as world leaders met in India to promote greater inve­s­tment in renewable energy.

Macron, who in December warned that the global shift to a green energy future was too slow, said France would extend an extra 700 million euros ($861.5 million) through loans and donations by 2022 for solar projects in emerging economies.

France had already committed $300 million euros to the initiative when it co-founded with India a global alliance in 2015 to unlock new cash for solar projects in sunny yet poor nations.

“We need to remove all obstacles and scale up,” Macron said at the launch of the International Solar Allia­nce in New Delhi on Sunday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who has committed to reducing India’s sizeable carbon footprint through a massive scale-up in renewable energy — said it was vital that nations were not priced out.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2018