Connaughton spoke about the US call to all its partner countries for greater participation in the Future Gen project at an interactive session on energy security and climate change. Under the Future Gen project, the US plans to build zero-emission coal power plants to reduce emission of greenhouse gases.

Under this project, initially one power plant was to be developed with an investment of $1 billion. ONGC, Coal India Ltd and NTPC were the stakeholders in the project.

Connaughton said the US would now restructure the project by building two to three large commercial power plants that will incur an investment of $10 billion. The project will use the cutting-edge carbon capture and storage technology.

“Every country should endeavour to adopt cleaner technology and a shared vision of a long-term global goal,” said Connaughton.

“Dozens of such zero-emission plants are needed across the globe to bring down the level of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases,” he added.

Connaughton said the Indian companies would also be able to access resources from clean energy fund initiated by US within the next three years. “The fund is aimed at assisting green power plants and renewable energy projects. The US government will provide $2 billion, which is 20 per cent of the total corpus. We also expect the G-8 countries to contribute to the fund. The UK and Japan have already pledged to contribute $3 billion,” said Connaughton.

The US has set aside $50 billion for developing low carbon technologies and $43 billion to build nuclear power to meet future energy demand.