The Bank's policymaking Development Committee at a one-day meeting here approved the measure but provided no details on how much money it would take to implement it.

A statement issued after the talks said only that the Bank should review existing financial resources and explore possibilities for new financing instruments such as international grants.

Over the next two years World Bank officials will study technology options available, analyze the impact of climate change in developing countries and propose specific programs.

The global lender estimates that two thirds of the increase in world energy demand over the next 25 years will come from the developing world.

At present 1.6 billion people in Africa and south Asia have no access to electricity while nearly 2.4 billion people still rely on wood, agricultural residues and dung for cooking and heating.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said in March that at the meeting here Sunday he would propose a World Bank fund under which 20 billion dollars would be invested to develop alternative energy sources in poor countries.

But Steen Jorgensen, the Bank's acting vice president for sustainable development, said that while Brown's idea had been welcomed it was not debated by the Development Committee on Sunday.

"We think the needs will be much larger," he said of the 20-billion-dollar price tag on Brown's idea.

The Bank plan has provoked criticism in some quarters. The chairman of the Development Committee, Colombian Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla, said some of his colleagues -- whom he did not name -- "find the (project) to be biased toward the development of alternative, renewable sources of energy not yet commercially viable while neglecting the bigger picture of aiming for cleaner, more efficient traditional energy sources."

Dutch Development Minister Agnes van Ardenne noted that the project principally targets middle-income countries where there is a potential market for the development of clean energy.

She said she would have preferred an "energy for all" initiative that would embrace the millions of people -- 500 million living in sub-Sahran Africa alone -- who have no access whatsoever to electricity.

"I believe that the framework on clean energy and development must be balanced in such a way that those people are being targeted too," she told the committee.

Her German colleague, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, meanwhile called for the creation of a fund at the African Development Bank to which oil producers would contribute for the promotion of renewable power sources in African countries.

Environmental activists were likewise critical of the World Bank initiative, which they said would in fact do little to combat the effects of global warming.

The Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies charged that the Bank's environmental track record was deeply flawed, estimating that oil, gas and coal projects it has financed since 1992 will release more than 43 billion tons of carbon dioxide over their lifetimes.

It said the Bank had invested nearly 30 billion dollars in fossil fuels since 1992.

"The World Bank must get out of fossil fuels now ... if we are to avert certain catastrophe for the world's poorest," said Daphne Wysham of the Institute.

Added Stephen Mills, director of international programs at the Sierra Club: "We expect the World Bank to lead, not to follow ... Many developing countries are in a great position to leapfrog over old, outdated technologies and to not follow our wasteful model."

World Bank officials insisted Sunday that they were fully committed to fighting global warming and to promoting reliance on clean energy.

Related Links
World Bank