The details surrounding a new international low carbon technology transfer fund proposed this weekend by UK, US and Japanese finance ministers are still being debated after other attendees at the G7 meeting of finance ministers in Tokyo failed to offer immediate support to the plan.

The communique following the G7 summit meeting of finance ministers from the seven industrialised nations stated simply that the group had "discussed" the idea, but there was no commitment from France, Germany, Italy or Canada to sign up to the fund.

The result falls short of the support sought by the UK, US and Japanese delegations, which had heavily trailed their proposals last week and urged other developed countries to invest in the World Bank-backed fund.

However, UK chancellor Alistair Darling remained confident wider support would be secured in the near future and work on the fund is expected to continue.

A spokesperson for the World Bank told Reuters that a formal announcement on the new fund was expected soon. "In addition to discussions with donor countries, talks have been or will shortly be undertaken with other interested parties, including other agencies in the UN system and the private sector," they added.

The aim of the new fund will be to accelerate investment in low carbon and climate resilient investments in developing economies.

The scale of the new fund remains unclear, but it is expected to include some of the $2bn President Bush pledged to invest in technology transfer in his recent State of the Union address, a chunk of the $10bn fund Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month and part of £800m environmental transformation announced by the British government last year.
The news comes as fresh concerns were voiced about the impact of a global economic slowdown on private sector investment in green technologies at a cleantech investment summit in California last week.

According to Reuters reports, Aaron Lubowitz, managing director in Morgan Stanley's global structured products group that the weakness of the stock market was making low risk investments in mature technologies increasingly attractive. He added that the appetite for small high risk technology projects, such as those embodied by the alternative energy sectors, had diminished in the last 12 to 24 months.

"There is going to be less [interest in cleantech] until some of the regulatory issues get resolved, until the market is a little bit healthier and until we see some of these credit markets stabilising," he said.