By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, Jan 16 (Reuters) – U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer on Wednesday hailed as a “Marshall Plan” for climate change news that the United States will set up a multi-billion dollar fund to help developing nations acquire clean power technologies.
The “clean technology fund” would help the developing nations meet the estimated $30 billion cost of acquiring expensive low carbon emission power technologies in place of cheaper, but far dirtier, old technologies.
“This clean technology fund is perhaps a Marshall Plan on climate change beginning to emerge where we stop worrying about the short term woes and focus much more on taking a bold step forward … towards a clean future,” de Boer told Reuters.
The Marshall Plan was a major investment project set up by the United States after World War Two to help rebuild Europe’s shattered economies.
“The notion of this clean technology fund, announced by the United States, represents a sea change in thinking on climate change,” de Boer, the head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in a telephone interview from Germany.
“Up to now there has been a lot of concern, certainly in the United States, that helping developing countries like China and India on climate change would take jobs away from Americans and give them to the Chinese,” he added.
Few details are yet available about the proposed new fund, such as whether it would be loans or grants, who would administer it and over what period.
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