PARIS - The World Bank can respond to a call by the Group of Eight rich nations to come up with plans to encourage investments in more environmentally friendly energy infrastructure, a bank official said on Monday.
G8 finance ministers on Saturday urged the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to make proposals at their annual meetings that encourage "cost effective investments in lower carbon energy infrastructure."
Ken Newcombe, senior adviser for sustainable development at the World Bank, said the bank could produce financing proposals for such investments by September, when the World Bank and International Monetary Fund hold their annual meetings.
"We can get the range of financial instruments which would make a difference on the table by the annual meetings, and the possibilities for cooperation," he told reporters on the sidelines of a climate change seminar in Paris.
"I'm excited by the invitation (from the G8). I think the prospects are good and we can certainly take the first step by the Annual Meetings," added Newcombe, who has managed the World Bank's carbon finance business for the last five years.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made tackling global warming, with its rising sea levels, increases in droughts and floods and threats to the lives of millions of the world's poorest people, a key goal of his 2005 presidency of the G8.
Last weekend's meeting of finance ministers from the G8 countries -- the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- paved the way for a summit of the groups' leaders on July 6-8 near Edinburgh.
Newcombe said interest in investing in cleaner energy would need to be stimulated in developing countries, where emissions of greenhouse gases are set to overtake those from the industrialised world within a few decades.
"The challenge is to ensure on the other side a receptivity to these kinds of investments in the major industrialising economies of the developing world," he said.
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