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Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda has called for more private sector involvement in the building of green infrastructure in Asia Pacific.

The region presents tremendous opportunities for green investment with its growing markets, still relatively low levels of consumption, and the need to fulfill enormous infrastructure requirements, says Kuroda.

“We must move toward deeper structural and systemic change in the way goods are manufactured and services provided. The green economy itself can become an engine of growth and the driver for a new generation of green jobs—bringing a higher quality of life,” Kuroda said in a keynote address at the annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit.

Asia is already becoming a global leader in green investments, with many of these focusing on low-carbon power generation. The People’s Republic of China, for example, is now the world’s top installer of wind turbines and solar thermal systems. India has the fifth largest wind power capacity in the world, and is encouraging the rapid expansion of many biogas, solar, and other forms of renewable energy.

The role of institutions like ADB is to use limited public sector funds to leverage the far more significant amounts of private capital needed to achieve green growth, Kuroda said.

For its part, ADB supports green growth and sustainable development through mechanisms such as the Climate Investment Fund, under which multilateral development banks have mobilized $6.5 billion for developing countries, with $2.5 billion earmarked for Asia and the Pacific.

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