Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said rich nations must abandon their "unsustainable lifestyle" to fight climate change and expand help to poor nations bearing the brunt of worsening droughts and rising sea levels.

Wen told the opening of a conference on Friday the financial crisis was no reason for rich nations to delay fighting global warming.

"As the global financial crisis spreads and worsens, and the world economy slows down apparently, the international community must not waver in its determination to tackle climate change," Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

The two-day meeting is to push China's call for rich nations to fund a huge infusion of greenhouse gas-cutting technology for developing countries. But foreign officials at the meeting raised doubts about Beijing's proposal, which could stoke contention over who pays and how much.

China is widely believed to be the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from industry, power plants and vehicles lifting global temperatures. But Wen threw the onus back on rich nations, with their much higher emissions per person and long history of polluting the air.

"Developed countries shoulder the duty and responsibility to tackle climate change and should alter their unsustainable lifestyle," he told the meeting.

Chinese officials have said wealthy nations should divert as much as 1 percent of their economic worth to paying for clean technology transfers and helping the Third World overcome damage from the rising temperatures bringing more heatwaves and droughts, more powerful storms and rising sea levels.

This would mean a total $284 billion a year if members of the Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development (OECD) paid up based on the size of their economies in 2007.

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The sharp decline in the oil price from its high earlier in the year has, for the time being at least, taken some of the urgency out of the debate over energy supplies.

Yet the underlying geopolitical tensions are still there. Many commentators see the recent Russia-Georgia conflict as a result of pipeline politics between major powers, who are jostling to control the energy resources of the Caspian basin and Middle East. With the increase in oil prices over the last decade, and the painful dependence of many countries on hydrocarbons becoming ever clearer, the search for alternative energy sources is still a vital one. As a commentator in the Financial Times put it in a recent article, "The need for a transition to a more diversified, lower-carbon energy economy is as urgent as ever."

Definitions of alternative energy diverge a little - some take the term to include only fuel sources that do not harm the environment or use up natural resources (for example wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, wave and tidal energy), others include all energy sources other than from fossil fuels (so also including nuclear power, for example). In the US ETF market there is now quite a sophisticated choice of funds for investors to choose from in this sector, including diversified clean energy ETFs, with the largest fund of this type, the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio, now totalling nearly $1.5 billion in assets, but also several specialised ETFs covering solar, wind and nuclear energy producers. How do things look for European ETF investors by comparison?

Although the FTSE ET50 index also includes water technologies and pollution control, and waste and resource management stocks, I've included it in this comparison because of the large weighting it devotes to companies involved in alternative energy and energy efficiency. However there's a clear overlap - as far as this index is concerned - with the universe covered by water ETFs.

As might be expected from a relatively new sector of the ETF market - the oldest fund in the table above has just over a year's track record - there is a proliferation of indices to reckon with. Let's dig deeper into index methodologies for the four non-nuclear ETFs.

The Lyxor New Energy ETF is relatively concentrated, with only twenty constituents. By contrast the PowerShares Global Clean Energy ETF is much more diversified, due to its equal-weighting methodology, with all the holdings set at a 2% weighting when rebalanced. The iShares S&P Global Clean Energy and EasyETF FTSE ET50 ETFs fall somewhere between these two extremes in terms of concentration.

In summary, expect pretty divergent performance from the different alternative energy indices.

How have the ETFs fared during the bear market, and what does the investment case look like for this sector?

This year has been a brutal one so far for holders of the funds - their performance has been much worse than that of the broad market, with a precipitous decline from September onwards. All three of the ETFs that were launched last year have lost more than half of their value from their January highs. The PowerShares Global Clean Energy ETF has declined by 54% from its peak, the iShares S&P Global Clean Energy ETF has fallen nearly 60%, and the Lyxor New Energy ETF is down 57%.

Is this a buying opportunity? The bullish argument is set out in a recent Lyxor presentation, which points out that renewable energy sources currently meet around 13% of global primary energy requirements, while some experts expect this figure to rise to 50% by 2050. Ian Simm, the CEO of Impax, a London-based fund manager specialising in the environmental sector and which provides the specialist design input to the FTSE ET50 index, points out that the alternative energy and waste/water sectors already generate hundreds of billions of revenues worldwide each year, with forecast annual growth rates of 15-20%. In Simm's view, this trend is well-supported by both public and private sector spending.

On the other hand there are plenty of sceptics - Roger Nusbaum of Seeking Alpha has written of a fad in solar stocks, while others have pointed out the distortions introduced to the global energy market and the unforeseen environmental impact of state support for biofuels. The recent stock price collapse of NASDAQ-listed ethanol producer, Biofuel Energy, hasn't helped sentiment, and biofuel stocks in general have had a terrible year.

But at the same time comparisons with the dot-com bubble seem overstated. Taking the current top ten holdings in the iShares fund (and excluding two that have no earnings), the average forecast p/e ratio is currently 12 - hardly in the stratosphere. Others have pointed out that, while a dot-com start-up required little more than an idea, a garage and a computer, alternative energy companies need substantially more in terms of research and development, so barriers to entry in this sector are considerably higher. Whatever way you look at it, investing in the sector via an ETF seems to make sense, as a diversified spread of companies gives you a better chance of picking some winners in what is bound to remain a volatile area of the market.

The assets raised by the European alternative energy ETFs are still tiny - both in the context of the overall market size, and by comparison with similar US ETFs. But active product development continues - Impax and FTSE recently launched an "Environmental Opportunities Index", which might form the basis for another ETF, and the Index Group at Société Générale, parent company of Lyxor, already calculates a number of indices under a "sustainable investment" banner, including BIOX (World Bio Energy) and SOLEX (World Solar Energy), which are not yet available in ETF form, but could no doubt easily be added to Lyxor's range.

Despite this year's decline in oil prices, it seems a fair bet that a return to cheap energy is not on the cards. With the longer term demand/supply outlook still in favour of higher prices, and geopolitical tensions adding to the mix, the alternative energy sector should find some underpinning as one of the true potential growth sectors in the equity market.

Gulf Oil, LP has announced the grand opening of its first e85 fueling station in New England to service commuters with Flex Fuel Vehicles (FFVs). This station is an important milestone to expand Massachusetts and New England's fuel resources, providing greater access to affordable and environmentally friendly alternative fuels.

This new station makes it easier for Massachusetts' drivers to drive on the leading edge of alternative fuel. There are more than 75,000 FFVs registered in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, about 4,000 of which are located within a 5-mile radius of the new Gulf Oil e85 fueling station, located at 100 Service Road in Boston, at Logan Airport.

Additionally, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which operates 35 branches in the Boston area, including at Logan Airport, has more than 1,000 FFVs in its fleet throughout the Commonwealth. The U.S. Postal Service has more than 390 FFVs in the Boston area, which include delivery, administrative and inspection service vehicles. Both are participating in today's event, as are representatives from Massport, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, and Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt.

The use of e85 is steadily growing across the country. According to the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, there are more than 1,800 E85 ethanol fueling stations in the U.S. E85 is also more affordable and environmentally friendly than conventional gasoline. For instance, drivers across the Nation who filled up with e85 in August paid on average 68 cents a gallon less than their counterparts who used conventional gasoline, according to E85Prices.com. In addition, e85 reduces ozone-forming pollution by 20 percent, green house gases by 30 percent, according to the Argonne National Laboratory.
"We are proud to be among the first to open this alternative fueling location, and we look forward to the day when many more choices -- from e85, biodiesel and Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) from primarily domestic sources form the foundation of a new energy future," said Gulf Oil CEO Joseph Petrowski. "We look forward to remaining a market leader in alternate fuel development and are proud that our home of Boston and the Northeast are in the forefront of this transformation." The opening of this alternative fueling location is the result of two strong partnerships that seek to bring alternative fuels to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The first is between Gulf Oil and the station's operator Energy North and its President Mr. Ken Black who is committed to broaden its fuel options from traditional petroleum to a more varied and secure domestic source of biofuel.

The second partnership is between the public and private sectors. Mr. Petrowski continued, "The partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and the leadership of Massachusetts Representative Delahunt, Governor Deval Patrick, and Energy Secretary Ian Bowles is an important example to the nation of how the public and private sectors can work constructively to solve one of the most important issues of the 21st century: our nation's energy security. Energy security and environmental improvement can be simultaneously achieved. We wish to thank all of the Federal and State officials and private industry executives for having the vision and foresight to help make this fueling station a reality."

According to Canadian news service globeinvestor.com, auto parts giant Magna International Inc. has expanded its push into leading-edge environmental technologies with the purchase of BluWav Systems LLC.

BluWav develops and supplies electric and energy-management systems for hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and battery-powered electric vehicles, which are a key focus of auto makers as they try to meet stringent new U.S. fuel economy guidelines that come into place by 2020.

Magna is targeting those vehicles as a critical area of growth in the next decade.

“BluWav provides technical leadership in multiple product areas for Magna Electronics,” said Carlos Mazzorin, president of that Magna division.

No financial details of the purchase were revealed. BluWav is based in Rochester Hills, Mich., and can be found on the web at http://www.wavecrestlabs.com/