Govt considering VC fund to promote green tech: PM

Alarmed by global warning, the government is considering setting up a venture capital fund to promote green technologies.

This was announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, organised by The Energy and Research Institute (Teri).

The PM also said that the National Plan of Action on Climate Change, to be released in June this year, would address the challenges of global warming.

"The Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change is working on a National Plan of Action for Climate Change. Even as we engage internationally in creating a global strategy to address climate change, we would, in parallel, work on local, sub-national and national action to meet the challenges of climate change," he said.

The environmental crisis that manifests as climate change makes the people realise that they have a common predicament, he said, adding "it is a collective crisis but, if imaginatively handled, offers a collective opportunity to reinforce human solidarity in the face of natural forces."

Singh observed that public transport needed immediate attention and the government had asked the Planning Commission to come up with a comprehensive policy in this regard.

Emphasising the need to create knowledge partnerships across countries to collaborate on climate change action, Singh said India had decided to link all academic institutions that work on climate change on a national knowledge net and also identify key knowledge institutions that become centres of excellence in climate change related research.

The PM said that at the international level, India would continue to engage with all nations to strengthen global initiatives in the area of climate change.

Recalling his commitment on carbon emissions at the last G-8 Summit at Heiligendamm, Singh said, "India is prepared to commit that our per capita carbon emissions will never exceed the average per capita emissions of developed industrial economies. Moreover, as developed countries take measures to bring down their per capita carbon emissions, our threshold would come down too. This is our solemn commitment."

The summit, which has chosen climate change as its theme this year, is being attended by heads and environment ministers of various states, besides the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework for Climate Change.