专家呼吁提高低碳技术的盈利效果

China, one of the world's biggest emitters, is also well-known for being the most prolific investor in renewable energy systems.

According to a report published in June last year by the United Nations Environment Programme, or UNEP, China's investments in renewable energy for 2011 were double the amount of total investment back in 2007.

China's investment in renewable energy during the 12th Five-Year Plan from 2011 to 2015 will reach 1.8 trillion yuan or 294 billion US dollars.

Remco Fischer, an expert working on climate change with UNEP, believes more investment would come to the sector if the profitability of high-carbon options were to deteriorate.

"Low-carbon technologies are becoming more and more competitive. They are, still in many cases they are not there yet. If you look at it from a purely financial perspective, very often, it is still the fossil fuel, the conventional technologies that offer higher financial returns. So we need to boost the profitability of low carbon and we need to deteriorate somehow the profitability of high-carbon options to be able to effectuate a change in the mainstream."

Investments to combat and adapt to climate change is happening around the world. And according to a report by the Climate Policy Initiative, an organization that works to improve the most important energy and land use policies worldwide, private investment worth 224 billion US dollars accounted for 62 percent of total global climate investment last year.

Meanwhile, public sources of finance such as incentives, loans and project investment accounted for the remainder. However, in China the private sector often assumes a wait-to-see attitude with regards to investment.

Remco Fischer believes that climate-smart sectors will only start to receive private investment once private sector decision makers are fully informed of the profitability of climate change investment.

"The low-carbon technologies would tend to be newer than their conventional counterparts, which are, you know, more carbon-heavy, perhaps. That makes it more risky. What I see here as being the main intervention from the public side is information. You know, is making sure that private sector decision makers know how climate change will change their business models and impact their business models in the sectors they operate in and in the regions they operate in."

At the recent launch ceremony of the China Climate Finance Research Project, Chen Huan, director of the China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, which operates under the Ministry of Finance, also expressed an ambition to bring international investment to China's climate-smart sectors in addition to the government's policy funds and private capital.

"The market is definitely profit-driven. If the profit is spotted, low-carbon development would arouse interest from not only domestic financial institutions, private sectors but international organs to make investments. So I imagine the launch of climate finance innovation facility may help set up a bridge between government and the market. With the government funds playing a role like a seed, our main goal is mobilizing money from social sectors to involve in the business of low-carbon technology."

The project aims to help make the allocation of capital more efficient by providing updated research using innovative policy tools.

For CRI, I'm Stuart Wiggin.