By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China, which makes 70 percent of the world's lightbulbs, has agreed to phase out incandescent bulbs in favor of more energy-efficient ones, part of a push by a leading world environmental funding agency.
The transition could be made in the next 10 years, said Monique Barbut, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility.
"We are starting a world campaign to ban all inefficient lightbulbs," Barbut said at the Reuters Environmental Summit in Washington. "And China has just agreed."
China's program will be formally announced in December at a meeting of climate negotiators in Bali, Indonesia, she said.
The switch to more efficient bulbs from traditional incandescent ones could mitigate 500 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide annually, equal to about half the climate-warming emissions of Germany, she said.
China is the first developing country to agree to join this program, and the facility will invest about $25 million for the Chinese program alone.
Other countries -- including Mexico, Indonesia, Venezuela and Costa Rica -- may join in future, Barbut said.
"If we decide and if countries really agree, it is something that could be done in the next 10 years," she said. Continued...
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