ISLAMABAD, July 15: Pakistan is seriously considering signing Kyoto protocol to join larger global effort to combat climate change and currently it is conducting advanced studies on the implications and repercussions of the protocol.

This was stated by environment secretary Javed Hasan Aly at a workshop on "Carbon Finance Business" organized by the World Bank that is currently trying to sell a new range of financing products to developing countries, including Pakistan.

Mr Aly, however, said he could not give timeframe when Pakistan was to sign the protocol because it had not been referred to the federal cabinet, but the government was mindful of the considerations of such a global effort.

A representative of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) said that it was in the process of identifying a location to help set up a private sector wind power project, most probably on the Makran coastal area near Karachi or Chakwal in the central Punjab.

She said the IFC was sponsoring a detailed feasibility study on the proposed wind power project and added that the Alternate Energy Board (AEB) of the government of Pakistan was unlikely to take such a wind project in the next two years because of certain problems.

She said the IFC was also in the process of sponsoring a 100-mw waste water power plant in a cluster of industrial units in Faisalabad. Programme manager, Carbon Finance Business of the World Bank, Asif Faiz, told the participants that the CFB had approved $295 million of carbon finance transactions in sustainable energy projects, comprising over 90 per cent of its total active pipeline of $325 million.

These transactions are expected to leverage some $2.2 billion of underlying financing for these projects, due largely to the leveraging effect of the high quality revenue stream, which mitigates other project risks.

He said the bank was making efforts to ensure that developing countries and economies in transition could benefit from international efforts to address climate change, including the emerging carbon market for greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Programme manager said the bank wanted to catalyze a global carbon market through the purchase of high quality emission reductions in climate-friendly projects in developing countries and economies in transition.

As such, carbon finance is the first large scale initiative that seeks to catalyze private sector investments to address a global environmental issue, he said.

Mr Faiz said Pakistan could benefit from the new products in the fields of hydropower projects, solar, wind, thermal, municipal solid waste and agri-business, but clarified that funding could be given only in stand alone projects which had no linkage with the existing loss making and poorly performing power sector.