Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

Japan’s Bank for International Cooperation, the government’s main overseas lender, told Bloomberg it will increase yen loans and investment in clean-energy technology to help cut greenhouse emissions in China and India, Asia’s two economic powerhouses. japan is believed to be the regions greenest country.

Japan, together with the World Bank, the U.S. and the U.K. plans to raise a US$5.5 billion fund to help poor nations develop clean technology. Finding ways to convince developing countries to agree to emissions targets is likely to be a focus of the Group of Eight industrialized nations summit in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido next week.

“We have to focus on major developing countries, and as a financier we are going to put more and more money into private- sector investment in these countries, not only by lending but also by equity financing,” Takashi Hongo, director-general of environment finance at JBIC, said in Tokyo. Hongo declined to say how much money the bank has set aside for the projects.

China is eager to discuss ‘long-term goals’ on fighting climate change at the G8 summit but is stuck to its position that rich nations must lead on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Forbes reported.

‘We are ready to discuss the establishment of a long-term global goal to cope with climate change including sustainable development, emissions reductions and efforts to tackle climate change,’ said Chinese official Su Wei.

The more China roars, the more pollution pours out of all its new Buicks, coal-fired power plants and cement factories. Last year China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top producer of greenhouse gases. Major upgrades are needed to its power stations, steel mills and chemical factories. Not only does Japan have the technology and money to help China, India and the rest of emerging Asia reduce emissions, it also has the will to share them. The Japanese government sees environmental assistance as a way to bolster its waning influence in the region, a phenomenon its people lament as “Japan passing.”

Japan certainly knows how to transform developing economies from energy wasters to energy savers after surviving its own era of environmental destruction. Much like China today, Japan in the 1950s and ’60s placed modernizing industry and elevating incomes above improving the environment and public health. The air in Japanese cities was so filthy that residents walked around in masks. In the 1970s, the nation was also alarmed by the two oil shocks, which exposed its vulnerability to the global oil market. A consensus formed that Japan needed to balance growth with greater conservation, and a nationwide effort was launched to reduce energy use and clean up the environment. The result: for every dollar of GDP generated, Japan uses only one-eighth as much energy as China. “Japan was a front runner in economic development in Asia and suffered some bitter experiences,” says Ichiro Kamoshita, the nation’s Minister of Environment. “Japan wants the countries that are now trying to develop to become prosperous without going through such bad experiences.”

Japan has shared much of its top technology with China. Since the 1990s, Japan has sponsored 18 “model projects” in China, through which the government finances the installation of the latest Japanese emissions-reducing and energy-saving systems–for example, facilities that capture the heat and pressurized-gas by-products of cement and steel manufacturing, and garbage-incineration plants to generate electricity, TIME magazine said.