World's big polluters to fund clean energy projects

Six of the world's biggest polluters, led by the US, will create a multi-million dollar fund to encourage mining and power industries to develop and use cleaner energy technologies to combat climate change.

The Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate between the US, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India will also form eight working groups with business and industry to develop clean-energy projects for the fund.

Combined, the six countries account for half the world's greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil and their Sydney meeting is the first for their clean-energy partnership.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in an interview yesterday that Australia and the US would announce a financial contribution to get the fund started. South Korea, Japan, China and India would also commit support.

"The private sector as well as governments are going to sit down together and try to work out solutions to some of these problems," said Mr Downer.

"As they work out some of these solutions then they will come back to governments with those recommendations and we will have to have a look and see what needs to be funded."

Green groups said the two-day talks in Sydney were a façade and were aimed at subverting the Kyoto Protocol, which the US and Australia refuse to sign claiming its mandatory greenhouse gas cuts would threaten economic growth.

They said that without binding targets, which the Sydney climate pact will not propose, then it was doomed to fail.

Protesters in front of a conference venue yesterday buried a large replica of Australian Prime Minister John Howard's head in coal to symbolise what they said was his commitment to industry profits over climate-change solutions.

"Talk is cheap and the price of inaction is expensive," Greenpeace spokesman Catherine Fitzpatrick said. "The dirty, black fingerprints of the coal industry are all over this pact."

About 80 executives from global mining and energy firms, including BHP Billiton, Exxon Mobil and Rio Tinto, attended the talks yesterday.

"We will expect to challenge the private sector to do more... because this matter of greenhouse gas control is one that we all share," US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman told a joint news conference with Australian Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.

The Sydney climate pact's eight clean-energy working groups will be based on the industry sectors of mining, renewable energy, aluminium, cement, distributed energy, power generation, building and appliance efficiency and transportation. Industry leaders leaving the first day's talks backed the creation of a technology fund and taskforces and were optimistic that voluntary targets to tackle climate change would work.

"We've made a tremendous amount of progress under a voluntary framework here today and there's absolutely no question that businesses are prepared to back this with funding," said Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power.

But the six nations did not reveal how much funding would be made available for new energy technology development. Australia is expected to contribute A$100 million (US$75 million).

The US already spends more than any other country on developing new energy technologies, with $3 billion invested annually in areas such as hydrogen fuel, carbon sequestration and renewable fuels. It has committed to cut air pollution from its power plants by nearly 70 per cent, but has said it will cost $50 billion to install new technologies to achieve this.