The Hindu Business Line : ASEAN leaders pledge to invest more in renewable energy

Leaders of 16 countries at the East Asian summit have pledged to reduce dependence on conventional energy and invest more money in renewable sources and civilian nuclear power.

Worried by rising crude oil prices and by the prospect of their needing more and affordable energy to fuel rising economic growth rates, the leaders who met at Cebu in the Philippines on Monday, welcomed the clean energy initiative from Japan which reportedly promised $2 billion in funding for various energy saving projects in member nations.

The 16 nations include the ten of the ASEAN group — China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, told Indian journalists after the summit meeting that he had intervened to outline India's efforts to develop renewable sources of energy, the efforts to develop bio-diesel as a supplement and part-substitute to petroleum and the focus on nuclear energy.

He said he suggested that financial institutions, both international and regional, should finance energy-efficient technologies and also hydroelectric projects.

For India, in the thick of negotiations with the US on increasing nuclear power generating capacity, there was support at the meeting from among others, Australia, which holds more than a third of the world's uranium reserves, but does not generate a single watt of commercial nuclear energy.

The Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, said after the meeting, "I also argued in favour of nuclear power being maintained as an option, a view that was shared by the Prime Minister of Singapore as well as the Prime Minister of India. I pointed out that although renewables were part of the solution, you couldn't, in the Australian experience, run power stations with solar power."

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