India to hold RE-Invest 2020 online due to COVID-19 situation
The expo was earlier scheduled to be held in October 2019 but was postponed
The programme is slated to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 14 and will continue till October 17
New Delhi: In view of the COVID situation, India has decided to hold RE-Invest 2020, the 3rd Global Renewable Energy Investors' Meet and Expo, online, the MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy) has said in a notification. The expo was earlier scheduled to be held in October 2019, but it was postponed to 2020 "due to unavoidable circumstances," the MNRE had said at the time.
The government has now floated an RFP (Request for Proposal) on April 21 for the development, implementation and management of an interactive IT platform to conduct RE-Invest 2020 in digital space.
RE-Invest 2020 dates
The programme is slated to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 14 and will continue till October 17, said Dr Megha Pushpendra, Lead, Strategic Communication, ISA (International Solar Alliance). She added that all activities — meetings (G2G, G2B, B2B and B2C), conferences, panel discussions, high-level plenaries and exposition — will take place online.
'We expect participation to be bigger on the digital platform'
Elaborating on how it was decided to organise RE-Invest 2020 online and the response received from various stakeholders in this regard, Pushpendra said, "Earlier we were expecting a huge global footprint because ISA is a part of it. And we were expecting that we would have industry delegations from at least 85 ISA member countries. But then because of the COVID situation, we were deliberating whether to carry the event on and make it happen or drop it altogether. But then once we saw the kind of interest that stakeholders have in a unique position that renewable energy has in the ecosystem, we thought that we should not let the dialogue die. And in order to keep the dialogue going, technology step-up was the only solution that was available with all of us. So, this digital platform was envisaged."
"The moment the MNRE Secretary made this announcement, we received a great response from all the regional organisations… be it EU, USAID, USISPF, among others. So, we expect that the participation is going to increase manifold," she added. According to a white paper by EY, RE-Invest 2020 expected to be two-three times bigger than what it was expected to be in the physical space because the virtual platform would erase physical limitations, the ISA spokesperson said.
