March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Japan plans to urge the Group of Eight industrialized nations, China and India to combat climate change by cooperating on advanced nuclear plants and electric vehicles, a government official said.

Japan will propose developing 21 technologies by 2030 at this week's energy and environment meeting in Chiba City near Tokyo, said the official, who declined to be identified before the talks start tomorrow. The technologies include coal- and gas- fired power plants that emit almost no carbon dioxide, steel- making processes using hydrogen, and a system to store carbon underground, the official said.

The three-day meeting, a prelude to a July summit on climate change in Japan, is part of an attempt to develop a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. World leaders spent a decade debating if global warming is happening and now need to limit its effects, Robert Watson, former chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said this week.

``Cutting-edge technology may be a key tool for Japan to step up its environmental-diplomatic efforts,'' said Kuniyuki Nishimura, research director of Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc.'s global warming division. ``Japan is promoting talks this weekend to pave the way for a meaningful summit in Hokkaido.''

The Kyoto Protocol requires 37 nations to cut emissions by a combined 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The accord was never designed to solve global warming, and a new treaty must set a target to restrict temperature gains, Watson, now chief scientific adviser at the U.K. environment ministry, said March 11 at the Oceanology International conference in London.

G-20 Talks

Akira Amari, Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, and Ichiro Kamoshita, the Environment Minister, will co-chair the Chiba City talks, which bring together ministers of the leading industrialized nations and 12 other countries, including Australia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea and South Africa.

Amari and Kamoshita will press participating countries to put up the cash to develop new technologies, the official said.

G-20 nations emit 19.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide, or about 80 percent of the world's total, according to Japan's environment ministry.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged to provide $10 billion over the next five years for developing countries to combat climate change, and spend $30 billion on new technologies at home.

Environment Fund

Together with the World Bank, Japan may join the U.S. and U.K. to raise a multi billion-dollar fund to finance projects to increase energy efficiency in developing countries like China, the official said.

The cost to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations of new infrastructure to withstand climate change may rise to between $15 billion and $150 billion a year, Nicholas Stern, a former U.K. adviser, said in a 2006 report known as the Stern Review.

Under the ``Cool Earth 50'' initiative, the Japanese government is pushing for a reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from the current level by 2050.

Japan pledged to trim annual emissions by 6 percent from the 1990 level under the Kyoto treaty. The reduction must be made over the five years starting next month. Emissions rose 6.4 percent in the year ended March 2007 from 17 years earlier.

To contact the reporters on this story: Shigeru Sato in Tokyo at ssato10@bloomberg.net; Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 12, 2008 20:40 EDT