PARIS, (Reuters) – France is proposing a plan to help  the world’s poorest countries finance renewable energy projects  that it hopes will form part of upcoming climate talks, Ecology  Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said in an interview yesterday.

The “justice-climate” plan could be financed by revenue from  financial transactions, he told the Journal du Dimanche  newspaper, without elaborating or specifically calling for a  tax.

Borloo hopes the plan, which the newspaper quoted sources  saying could raise 20 billion euros a year, will help break the  deadlock between rich and poor at talks in Copenhagen in  December aimed at agreeing a new climate treaty.  “The industrialised countries which have polluted a lot  should mobilise to finance the development of renewable energy  in the most vulnerable countries,” Borloo told the newspaper.

“They represent 1.2 billion people who suffer the most from  climate problems. Between this shock, their lack of economic  development and their absence from big international  negotiations, they are really undergoing a triple punishment.”

The money would be targeted towards specific programmes such  as hydraulic dams, solar energy stations or wind turbines, he  said.

The idea of a tax on financial transactions, sometimes  called a Tobin tax after economist James Tobin, has come up  regularly in recent months as policymakers examine how financial  markets might help pay for the effects of the financial crisis.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said European Union  leaders agreed a funding proposal for Copenhagen at a summit on  Friday after healing a rift over how to split the bill.

He said developing nations need 100 billion euros ($148  billion) a year from 2020 to battle climate change. About 22-50  billion euros of the total will come from the public purse in  rich countries.  The climate talks began in 2007, spurred by findings by the  United Nations Climate Panel that world emissions would have to  peak by 2015 to avoid the worst of desertification, floods,  extinctions or rising seas.  But progress has been slow because industrialised countries  and poor countries are split about how to share curbs on  greenhouse gases.