Updated on Wednesday, November 01, 2006, 00:00 IST

New Delhi, Nov 01: India today joined five countries, including the US and Japan, under the 'Asia-Pacific Partnership (APP) on clean development and climate' to encourage clean energy technologies.

Under the industry-oriented partnership, the member nations -- India, Australia, China, Japan, The Republic of Korea and the United States -- will facilitate nearly 100 individual projects.

The projects are aimed at meeting goals for energy security, air pollution reduction and climate change in ways that promote sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction, secretary for environment and forests Prodipto Ghosh told reporters here.

Eight public-private taskforces have been set up in the sectors of cleaner fossil energy, renewable energy and distributed generation, power generation and transmission, steel, aluminum, cement, coal mining and, building and appliances, he said.

"We have formulated eight action plans involving all the identified sectors and India has identified certain projects in the coal and steel sectors," Ghosh said.

"India has prepared and proposed seven projects in the fields of mining techniques and coal prepartion technology," S P Seth, additional secretary, ministry of coal said.

Officials from the ministry of steel said they had finalised projects with Japan which would be taken up under the partnership.

Bureau Report