Syracuse, Italy - Experts Wednesday renewed calls for a "green revolution" in spite of the global financial crisis, as Group of Eight (G8) environment ministers met in Italy with leading developing countries to discuss ways of combating climate change. "The time has come to start an energy revolution," said Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency at the G8 meeting in Syracuse, Italy.
With polluting greenhouse gases set to increase by 45 per cent by 2030 in the absence of such a revolution, Tanaka said the world would need to build 20 new nuclear stations, 300 solar energy centres, 18,000 wind turbines and 30 carbon capture and storage plants each year to keep temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.
Tanaka also called for 15 trillion dollars to be spent on developing low-carbon technologies, noting that global investments in renewable energy had increased by just 5 per cent in 2008 as a consequence of the global recession. This compares with an increase of 60 to 70 per cent in such investments between 2004 and 2007, Tanaka said.
Wednesday's round of talks in the Sicilian city of Syracuse focussed on how rich and poor nations should share the cost of developing green technology and combating climate change - which according to some estimates could require investments totalling 300 trillion dollars by 2050.
"We cannot ask developing countries to pay for our pollution, but developing countries must also do their fair share," said the meeting's host, Italian Environment Minister Stefania Giacomo.
As well as the world's eight most industrialised nations, the talks in Sicily were also being attended by officials from other major world polluters, including China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt and South Africa.
The United Nations' climate change tsar, Yvo de Boer, said G8 nations should team up with developing giants such as India and China to spread the use of low-carbon technologies.
"We cannot address global climate change without the engagement of major developing nations," de Boer said.
The meeting in Syracuse is one of a series of international discussions leading up to a December climate conference in Copenhagen, which will be tasked with finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"If this G8 meeting ... can lead to a strong partnership on technology cooperation, it will lay very important and solid foundations to advance success in Copenhagen in December of this year," said de Boer, who is the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
One of the major sticking points in the discussions leading up to Copenhagen is the reluctance by poorer nations to pay for the costly technology that is needed to stop global warming.
But de Boer played down talk of a major rift between the world's rich and poor.
"If you look at the countries (represented) here, probably the primary concern of those countries is not so much money, but cooperation on technology," he said.
"It's not a matter of giving the technology away for free, it is a matter of working together to develop the technologies that can be at the core of a long term solution," he said.
The UN's chief negotiator pointed to the billions of euros that are being spent every year by the European Union to research and develop green technology.
"If that could be turned into a partnership with developing countries, it would be an important step forward," he said.
Danish Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard, who will host the talks in Copenhagen later this year, welcomed the presence of major developing countries in Syracuse and called on the G8 to show "leadership" in fighting climate change.
The minister also urged the new United States administration of Barack Obama to come up with more specific ideas on how to combat climate change.
"Things are changing in Washington. But it is important that the American administration rather soon starts to becomes more explicit and specific when it comes to how they are going to address these issues," Hedegaard said.
While the Obama administration has vowed to reduce the country's emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020, it has yet to spell out how it intends to do so.
Obama was sending Lisa Jackson, head of the country's Environmental Protection Agency, to the talks in Syracuse, which were due to end on Friday.
The start of the G8 meeting coincided with Earth Day, an annual event designed to increase awareness about the environment around the world.
They were taking place amid heavy security in the Sicilian seaside city, with some 800 policemen braced for possibly violent protests planned for Thursday.
Italy is hosting the event as this year's G8 chair.
