US pledges $85m to support developing nations' clean tech projects

The US risked infuriating developing countries at the Copenhagen Summit late yesterday, announcing that it would contribute just $85m to a $350m multinational fund to accelerate the roll out of clean technologies in poorer nations.

The World Bank-backed initiative is separate to the three year fast-track funding scheme announced last week by the EU along with a pledge to pay €7.3bn into the fund. The US has yet to announce how much it will pay into that fund, but the $85m pledge still risks being compared unfavourably with the EU's commitment, particularly given developing countries are already frustrated by the US team's reluctance to put a figure on how much climate funding it will offer to help poor nations cope with global warming.

The new funding pledge was made by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the sidelines of the summit, and was accompanied by an announcement that the US would host a meeting in Washington next year to further discuss the accelerated roll out of low carbon technologies in developing countries.

He added that the funding would help to support a wide range of emission reduction projects, including a plan to install solar powered lamps in areas without access to electricity from the grid.

Italy, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland have also promised to pay into the $350m fund.

The announcement came as the head of the Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, told Reuters that the levels of climate funding being discussed in Copenhagen remained well short of what is required.

"At this stage the figures committed by the developed world are still insufficient and must be substantially increased over the years to come," Kuroda said, but did not give a figure for how high it needed to rise.

In related news, the World Bank announced last week that its Clean Technology Fund had approved $750m of financing for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects in the Middle East and North Africa.

The bank said that the financing would help to mobilise $4.85bn of investment in CSP projects in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. It added that combined the projects would provide about one gigawatt of capacity, tripling global CSP capacity.

The investment programme is particularly significant given that it runs parallel to European efforts to bolster solar energy capacity in North Africa as part of the ambitious Desertec plan to eventually transmit energy from solar farms in the region for use in Europe.