The ADB hit its $1 billion annual investment goal in 2008, the bank reported in a statement.

“While $2 billion per year is a significant commitment, this indicates only a fraction of the region’s financing requirements in the area of clean energy,” ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda told a news conference.

However, ADB expects that this contribution will catalyze additional resources from the private sector carbon markets and other sources.

Developing Asia presently accounts for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Unless urgent steps are taken to change development routines, the region’s share could easily raise to 40 percent or higher by 2030.

The bank said that it had funded wind power projects in China and India, a biomass power facility in Thailand, hydropower initiatives in Bhutan, China and Vietnam, and a shift to energy-efficient lighting for low-income Philippine shelters.

The ADB is also forcing projects to improve and widen energy-efficient mass transport systems, with such projects expected to cut Asia’s rapid-growing energy demand and minimize its dependence on expensive fuel imports.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank established in 1966 to promote economic and social development in Asian and Pacific countries through loans and technical assistance. It is a multilateral development financial institution owned by 67 members, 48 from the region and 19 from other parts of the globe. ADB’s vision is a region free of poverty. Its mission is to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their citizens.

The work of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is aimed at improving the welfare of the people in Asia and the Pacific, particularly the 1.9 billion who live on less than $2 a day. Despite many success stories, Asia and the Pacific remains home to two thirds of the world’s poor.

The bank was conceived with the vision of creating a financial institution that would be “Asian in character” to foster growth and cooperation in a region that back then was one of the world’s poorest. ADB raises funds through bond issues on the world’s capital markets, while also utilizing its members’ contributions and earnings from lending. These sources account for almost three quarters of its lending operations.

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