Developed countries are giving polluting fuels such as coal, oil and nuclear energy at least 10 times as much subsidy as they put into renewables like wind and solar energy, green groups said on Saturday. Environmental campaigners issued a blistering attack on G8 countries, meeting in Italy this weekend, accusing them of propping up polluting industries and failing to help new, clean technologies. According to data gathered by Greenpeace, the European Union ploughed $10 billion into fossil fuels and $5 billion into nuclear energy in 1997, compared with just $1.5 billion on renewables.

In the United States, renewable energies receive an even smaller share of government energy funding, the groups said. In the 50 years to 1998, fossil fuels and nuclear energy received $111.5 billion in federal subsidies. Renewables, excluding large hydro projects which have their own environmental disadvantages, took just $5 billion, a Friends of the Earth survey found. "Governments need to put their money where their mouths are," World Wild Fund for Nature's Jennifer Morgan told Reuters. "There really is no excuse for G8 governments not to have a significant proportion of their energy generated from renewables." U.N. scientists say gases from energy use are contributing to a projected increase in average temperatures of up to six degrees Celsius over the next 100 years.

Such global warming would have disastrous consequences on humans and wildlife. As G8 environment ministers met behind closed doors to discuss how to fight climate change, green groups said a switch of funds to renewables, which do not produce emissions, was key. "Without enhanced support in G8 and other industrialized country markets, renewables will not be able to reach the production levels necessary to drive costs to an affordable level for mass markets in the south," the groups said in a statement. The G8 countries should take the lead and promise to convert at least 20 percent of their energy consumption to renewables by 2010, the groups said. By contrast, the EU gets about six percent of its energy from renewables and plans to double this by 2010, EU figures show. Such a move would make economic as well as environmental sense, Greenpeace campaigner Steve Sawyer said. "If governments lead the way by shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels to renewables it would happen very quickly and a lot of people would make a lot of money and more new jobs would be created than by opening up new oil fields in the Amazon or Alaska," Sawyer told Reuters.

The industrialized world also needs to alter the finance available to energy projects in developing countries through institutions such as export credit agencies and the World Bank to ensure they switch from traditional schemes into renewables, they said. The World Bank spends 25 times more on fossil fuels than it does on clean energies, Friends of the Earth said.