WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank has called for more funding from donor countries to increase its work on climate change, as global development ministers prepare to meet this weekend to examine the bank's role in promoting clean energy, according to documents published ahead of the meetings.

The World Bank Development Committee, made up of development ministers from member countries, will meet on Sunday to examine the bank's global Clean Energy Investment Framework, which looks to improve access to clean energy while finding ways to finance low-carbon alternatives in developing countries.

Speaking during an African tour, Lula said Brazil's experience with biofuels showed the environmental and economic benefits of mass producing ethanol and bio-diesel.

BOSTON (Reuters) - British billionaire Richard Branson said on Monday his Virgin Group hopes to produce clean biofuels by around the start of the next decade and early next year will test a jet plane on renewable fuel.

Virgin hopes to provide clean fuel for buses, trains and cars within three or four years, Branson told a Mortgage Bankers Association meeting in Boston.

In the meantime, Virgin will be conducting a test jet flight on renewable fuels. "Early next year we will fly one of our 747s without passengers with one of the fuels that we have developed," Branson told the annual conference.

A new report from the U.S. National Research Council raises questions about the effects that homegrown fuels could have on water quality.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading environmental groups pressed Toyota Motor Co on Thursday to drop its opposition to the tougher of two fuel economy proposals in Congress, calling the automaker's stance contradictory.

In a letter to Shigeru Hayakawa, Toyota's chairman and chief executive of North American operations, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the National Environmental Trust and other organizations said Toyota should support the higher standard since it makes the best-selling gasoline-electric hybrid, the Prius.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said it will develop new rules governing how coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities sock away heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in underground reservoirs.

Burying CO2 in underground reservoirs is not commercially available yet, but has emerged as one possible way to slow global warming's potentially catastrophic results including flooding, heat waves and severe storms.

The EPA said in a statement it will propose regulations next summer to "ensure there is a consistent and effective permit system under the Safe Drinking Water Act for commercial-scale geologic sequestration programs to help reduce the effects of climate change."

Find a site. Buy’em. Plant’em. Plug’em in. Aside from the growing worldwide demand for clean power, it’s relatively easy to build wind energy capacity. Why would anyone consider building a nuclear power plant of say 1000 megawatts - which can take years to build - when power developers can buy off-the-shelf products (those megawatt-class wind turbines) and plant them in the soil for the same amount of power as the nuke in a very short period of time?

(Given recent announcements of record, ten-years-ahead-predictions, greenhouse gas emissions along with record Arctic ice melt, we might not have enough time to build nukes or develop mythical clean coal power plants.)

The announcement of plans from German renewable provider Conergy for a 1000 megawatt wind farm in the Australian Outback serves as a reminder as to how big and how smart and how much potential the wind energy industry still has. The wind is not only still in the sails of the wind energy industry, the wind is getting stronger as well.

The two countries, the most populous on the planet, might ease the projected water shortages by developing new biofuel technologies or boosting rain-fed crops such as sweet sorghum, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said.