The Prime Minister John Howard, officially opened the Asia Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership (AP6) in Sydney, and made the announcement during his opening address.
Mr Howard told a major climate change summit in Sydney that Australia would commit the money to the project over the next five years.
"Today I wish to announce that Australia will build further on its strong commitment and invest an additional one hundred million dollars over five years to support clean development projects, capacity building activity and our ongoing role in (the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate)," he said.
A quarter of the one hundred million dollars will be specifically earmarked for renewable energy projects, he said.
Australia's decision to commit the extra funding to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions comes on top of A$1.8 billion which the federal government has already earmarked to address climate change issues.
The US is also expected to be a major contributor to the scheme, designed to encourage the world's two largest developing nations to accelerate the fight to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
M.S. Puri from India's External Affairs Department told ABC radio that he summit is not just about first world countries delivering technology to developing countries.
“All the partners pool resources - we think that by itself can bring about significant reductions in costs rather than doing it yourself,” Mr Puri said.
Australia's state and territory governments want the federal government to go further and set up a national scheme to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Greens don’t agree
However, environmentalists believe the six-nation summit is more about protecting the coal industry than tackling climate change.
"From the little anyone has been told of the details of this pact, there will be no binding arrangements to reduce pollution, no targets and no timelines," Greenpeace said.
An Australian economic analyst has also raised doubts about businesses embracing their responsibilities under a proposed Asia Pacifc climate pact.
Professor John Quiggin from the University of Queensland says corporations may not want to get involved.
“Kyoto which is the protocol which this is an alternative to has emissions permits which are tradeable and the requirement for emissions permits gives businesses an incentive to reduce emissions. It’s not at all clear at this stage what sort of incentive there is for business, what sort of penalty there is if business just says 'well, thanks, but no thanks',” Professor Qiggin stold ABC radio.
Private sector pressure
Talks were held on Wednesday with a range of business chiefs from the energy sector, including Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Xstrata Coal, about ways to slash greenhouse emissions using clean technologies.
"We will expect to challenge the private sector to do more and challenge the private sector to take advantage of opportunities that are available to them," US Energy Secretary Sam Bodman told reporters.
"It's really the private sector, the companies that own the assets that make the financial allocations that are ultimately going to be the solvers of the problems."
While demand for electricity is expected to surge by 50 per cent in the next 20 years, the six nations at the two-day summit are reluctant to set emission reduction targets.
Instead, Mr Bodman is confident business leaders will respond voluntarily to fixing the global environmental problem.
"I believe that people who run these companies, they do have children, they do have grandchildren, they do live and breathe in the world and they would like things dealt with. That's what this is all about," he said.
Australia’s Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, said if businesses switched to cleaner technologies, the reduction in greenhouse gasses would be larger and three times less expensive than under Kyoto.
However, he warned reducing emissions would come at an economic cost.
The US believes nuclear power could be one solution to reducing the world's reliance on fossil fuels such as coal, but Australia remains cautious and wants further debate on the issue.
Mr Bodman said the US would back Australia's plan to sell uranium to China so it could generate nuclear power, as long as strict safeguards were in place to stop the precious resource falling into the hands of terrorists.
Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said more discussion was needed on the benefits and costs of nuclear power.
"Obviously nuclear power is greenhouse friendly and that needs to be taken into consideration when the aspirations of countries in terms of increasing their energy consumption are taken into account," Mr Downer said.
Trees, frogs and whales
Meanwhile German scientists say they've discovered a new source of methane a greenhouse gas that's second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change.
The researchers say the culprits are plants which apparently produce about 10 to 30 per cent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere.
Scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants and found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.
They say their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
At the same time a study published in the British weekly science journal, Nature, claims that global warming has wiped out two-thirds of species of unique frogs that inhabit the cloud forests of Central America.
Sixty-seven percent of the 110 varieties of harlequin frog, along with the golden toad, have disappeared from tropical America in the past 20 years, the study says.
The authors point the finger at a fungus called Batrachochytrium
dendrobatidis that grows on the frog's skin and eventually slays the amphibian.
Outbreaks of the fungus are clearly linked to man-made global warming, say the authors, led by Alan Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica.
Of the world's 1,856 known amphibian species, 427 are listed as critically endangered, including 122 species that are possibly extinct.
Also a study published this week in the British journal Biology Letters warns of the knock-on impact of climate shifts on whale populations.
British scientists looked at population numbers among southern right whales.
Their estimates, dating back 30 years, looked at individually identifiable whales spotted at their breeding grounds off the coast of Argentina in the Southwest Atlantic.
Breeding success was strongly linked with occurrences of El Nino, the disruptive buildup of warm water in the Western Pacific, which in turn had an impact on krill, the whales' staple food, in the Southern Ocean.