Billionaire financier George Soros told Reuters on Thursday he had found a $100 billion route to unlock climate talks in Copenhagen, while one business group complained the talks were "tone deaf" to the private sector.
U.N. talks in the Danish capital meant to agree the outline of a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol are stuck on splitting the bill to cut carbon emissions and prepare for more droughts, floods and rising seas.
Poorer nations want rich countries to spend 1 percent or more of their national wealth on emissions cuts in the developing world, or at least $300 billion annually, about double the closest estimates by industrialised countries.
"I've found a way for someone else to pay … to mobilise reserves that are lying idle," said Soros, on the sidelines of the Dec. 7-18 conference which world leaders will attend in the closing two days.
"This $100-billion fund I think could just turn this conference from failure to success."
Soros plans to invest $1 billion of a total of his own $25-billion funds in low-carbon assets. His initiative was only focused on filling a gap in short-term funding for emissions cuts in developing nations and relied on International Monetary Fund assets.
U.N. estimates suggest more than three-quarters of the money to fight climate change must come from the private sector, since governments cannot mobilise the estimated $10.5 trillion extra energy investment needed to 2030 to cut carbon emissions.
An additional $100 billion a year is needed for developing nations to prepare for a warmer world, the World Bank estimates.
But some in the business sector say the Copenhagen talks have paid too little attention to initiatives to mobilise private sector funds and scale up existing carbon markets.
"TONE DEAF"
"It seems this process is sometimes very disconnected from the way technology is deployed and business transacted," the President of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Lisa Jacobson, told Reuters, on the fringe of the Copenhagen talks.
"There are a few good (private sector) initiatives but it's tone deaf in the (conference) documents."
Henry Derwent, head of the global carbon market lobby group, the International Emissions Trading Association, complained that delegates were too focused on negotiations and not enough on how the private sector would implement them.
But a senior executive at French engineering firm Alstom said he was satisfied with how the talks were conducted and added he wanted Copenhagen to deliver long and short-term targets to cut carbon emissions.
"We need a long-term policy, and it should start now," said Philippe Joubert, president of Alstom Power.
Environment groups welcomed Soros' idea. "The proposal is an exciting initiative that deserves further consideration," said ActionAid's climate justice coordinator Tom Sharman.
Under the plan, developed countries would invest $100 billion in IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) in carbon-cutting projects in developing nations.
The IMF originally made the rights available to help combat recession and add liquidity after panic froze debt markets.
The invested projects would repay the proposed $100-billion loans, to be spent over the next decade, from earnings which they would make under an assumed global carbon market.
IMF gold reserves would guarantee the principle and interest. Soros acknowledged a series of obstacles to his proposal, including U.S. Congress approval, IMF director approval and a global carbon price.
