Development bank boosts climate lending

The Inter-American Development Bank on Thursday pledged to increase financing for renewable energy and climate-related projects to $3 billion annually by 2012.

The bank's lending for sustainable energy projects will likely reach $1.5 billion this year, IDB said.

The announcement comes at the start of a two-day conference of western hemisphere energy ministers hosted by the bank, the Energy Department, the State Department and the Organization of American States.

IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno said that the bank faces "surging demand" from Latin American and Caribbean nations that want to boost renewables development and fight global warming.

He also announced that going forward, the bank intends to devote a fourth of its total lending to "solving energy and climate-related problems," up from five percent in years past.

Moreno said the projects the bank intends propose include development of infrastructure needed to tap wind, solar and hydroelectric power in Haiti.

He also touted other IDB efforts to enhance the bank's work on alternative energy. The bank is working with the Energy Department and other partners -- such as energy think tanks in South America -- to launch the Energy Partnership of the Americas Innovation Center to be housed at the IDB.

It is meant to be an "incubator" for bank-supported energy projects undertaken with the bank's member governments and the private sector, Moreno said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is slated to address the event later today.

Development banks are under pressure to steer lending away from fossil fuel projects. The World Bank last week came under attack from environmentalists -- and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) -- for agreeing to lend South African state utility Eskom over $3 billion to build a large coal-fired power plant.

The U.S. abstained from the vote by the World Bank's board.