Multilateral lending agency Asian Development Bank on Monday said it will invest $60 million in three venture capital funds targeted at companies combating the impact of climate change and promoting clean energy in India and China."Climate change will hit Asia hard in coming decades. Investing in these venture capital funds will help channel finance into innovative and affordable technologies that tackle the challenge of climate change in ways that are suited to developing Asia," the Director General of the ADB's private sector operations department, Philip Erquiaga, said in a release.
The ADB is injecting $20 million each into the three funds - Aloe Environment Fund III, Keytone Ventures II and VenturEast Life Fund III - which are likely to leverage an additional $600 million to $700
million of private sector investment.
The funds will invest in new technology companies involved with climate change mitigation and adaptation or environment protection.
Mitigation costs in developing countries are estimated to reach over $100 billion per year by 2030, depending on the scale of long-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
Adaptation costs for the Asia-Pacific region are expected to reach $40 billion per year between now and 2050.
The 2007 Bali Action Plan, the Copenhagen Accord and subsequent climate change agreements have all identified technology innovation and transfer as the key to tackling the challenges put forth by climate change.
However, companies working in these areas have often struggled to access sufficient private capital to get off the ground, the ADB said.
