New Delhi: - On August 7, 2015, Deputy Chief of Mission M. Ashraf Haidari accompanied Afghanistan’s Minister of Energy and Water Ali Ahmad Osmani to visit the sites of two renewable energy projects run by India’s non-profit and private sectors, including the IndoSolar that manufactures solar photovoltaic cells. The visit to the projects followed the Afghanistan Renewable Energy Summit co-hosted by the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the USAID Mission to Afghanistan, in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) and the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi.

The purpose of the Summit was two-fold: 1) to exchange information on opportunities for bilateral cooperation between Afghanistan and India in the renewable energy sector and 2) to match Afghan and Indian businesses in the renewable energy sector for business and investment, including joint ventures. Afghanistan’s Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development Nasir Ahmad Durrani also participated in the Summit, and the two Ministers discussed the importance of exploiting Afghanistan’s renewable energy resources, both as part of Afghanistan’s commitment to a clean environment free from greenhouse gases and to ensure the country’s sustainable development.

“Afghanistan is blessed and gifted with huge potentials to produce clean and sustainable energy from the natural resources like more than 300 days of sunshine in a year, 6,8000 MW potential of wind, 23,000 MW of hydro, and more than 4,000 MW of biomass and thermal potentials,” said Minister Osmani. He noted that Afghanistan had opened investment doors for national and international investors in the renewable energy sector, issuing business licenses for generation, transmission, and distribution of energy to be produced from different sources, including solar and wind.