Ministers from the United States, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia met top executives from major mining and energy companies to seek high-tech ways of addressing the issue.

The ministers were expected to use the two-day, closed-door meeting to press corporate giants such as Exxon Mobil, Rio Tinto and Peabody Energy for billions of dollars in contributions to pollution-reduction programmes.

Australian Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said it was time for private enterprise to "step up to the plate" and accept the task of halting global warming, while US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said he would challenge executives to do more.

"It's the private sector, the companies that own the assets, that make the potential allocations (towards reducing greenhouse gases) that are ultimately going to be the solvers of the problem," Bodman told reporters.

He said it was not up to governments to force industry into action, insisting executives would act voluntarily if governments made their task as easy as possible.

"The people who run the private sector, who run these companies -- they too have children, they too have grandchildren, they too live and breathe in the world and they would like things dealt with effectively -- that's what this is all about," he said.

American Electric Power president Mike Morris said industry was prepared to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy, adding that his company alone had committed 20 billion dollars to the latest hi-tech power plants.

"There has been a tremendous amount of progress today under a voluntary nature," Morris told reporters after the first day's talks concluded.

Macfarlane said if all countries adopted "clean" fossil fuel-burning technology advocated by delegates from the Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership -- known as AP6 -- then emissions would be reduced by three times the level envisaged under the UN's Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

The talks in Sydney are controversial partly because two of the major players in the new partnership, the United States and Australia, have refused to ratify the UN protocol.

While the protocol commits developed countries to reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases produced from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, AP6 has ruled out setting any enforceable targets.

The US accounts for 25 percent of carbon emissions while Australians produce more carbon dioxide per person than any other country, but they say the Kyoto pact is unfair as it does not commit developing nations to reducing emissions.

However, critics said the conference was a smokescreen to divert attention from the US and Australian refusal to ratify Kyoto.

A group of around 80 protesters demonstrated outside the conference venue in downtown Sydney, dumping a load of coal on an effigy of the host, Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Police forming part of a tight security operation for the talks looked on as the environmental activists chanted, "Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, take your oil and go to hell."

Greenpeace campaign manager Danny Kennedy said protesters were angry that the government had called an environment meeting aimed at entrenching the Australian economy's reliance on mining resources.

"It's clearly a conference about how to keep selling uranium and coal while we pretend that we are addressing the problem of global warming," he told AFP.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said there was a need to satisfy people's aspirations for higher living standards and supply clean energy.

"All of the countries involved want to see their economies to continue to grow. But they all have environmental responsibilities that they want to meet as well. The great challenge here is going to be to work... with the private sector, not just by governments alone," he said.

Bodman said the world community must seriously consider using nuclear power if it is to make any serious inroads into greenhouse gas emissions as global demand for electricity is set to increase by 50 percent over the next 20 years.

"Nuclear power, it seems to me, is an obvious requirement" for the future, Bodman said.

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