In a report titled Irrelevance or Leadership, Greenpeace said if the ADB continued to fund coal-based projects it could fail in its mission to reduce poverty and promote development.

"The main cause of climate change is our reliance on fossil fuels—coal, oil and gas—to produce energy and the solution is to shift to clean, renewable energy such as biomass and wind power," it said.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the industry clocked $14 billion in sales in 2005 but less than 10 per cent of it was in Asia.

"Coal consumption in the Asia-Pacific region is increasing. It is not surprising that 2005 registered one of the largest temperature increases on record according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration," it said.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stood at their highest "in 650,000 years" and rapidly growing nations such as China and India need to bring down their emissions, said the report released during the ABD meeting.

Renewable energy projects need financial and policy support to create a sustainable market, it said. The total amount ADB invested on nine Asian fossil fuel projects during the last six years was 1.54 billion dollars or 26 per cent of its energy portfolio while renewable energy and energy efficiency got only 4.1 per cent, it said.

India joined the 1997 Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in August 2002 to cut greenhouse emissions. It is the only international accord that aims at reducing volumes of greenhouse gas pollution.

Britain wants to see a world-wide consensus on global warming that goes beyond the disputed protocol and puts China and India at the heart of the issue.

The report urged the ADB to encourage developing member nations to set "binding, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets." The ADB on Wednesday said it would earmark $ 1 billion by 2008 to fund renewable energy projects.

"At this historic crossroads, with the impacts of climate change poised to hit Asia's poorest the hardest, which direction will the ADB take?" it said.

"The time for leadership is now." K Srinivas, climate change campaigner at Greenpeace India, said there were only two mistakes one could make in fighting climate change.

"Not starting and not going all the way. The ADB is guilty of both," Srinivas said. "They have taken only the most cursory initial steps towards investing in renewable energy and are far from committed to going all the way to prevent climate change."