After years of debate over who will foot the bill to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, world leaders are now taking up a new matter: Who will profit.

Diplomats from some of the world's biggest economies will gather in Hawaii today for a new round of talks aimed at hashing out an international agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which sets caps on greenhouse-gas emissions but expires in 2012. The meeting isn't expected to produce any major breakthrough.

But it comes as the U.S. and other industrialized countries are pushing developing nations to scrap tariffs and other trade barriers they now impose on clean-energy technology -- a push backed by Western companies such as General Electric Co., which see sales of those goods in the developing world as a hot business.