BRUSSELS - European taxpayers should be prepared to pay up to 15 billion euros ($21.9 billion) per year to help poorer nations confront climate change, officials in Brussels said Thursday.

The European Union’s executive, the European Commission, moved to take the lead in the world fight against global warming by being the first major player to quantify, at around 100 billion euros (around $146 billion) per year by 2020, the amount of funding that developing countries will need to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to rising temperatures.

While much of this money should come from the private sector, including from an expanded international carbon market, and from domestic sources, rich nations should provide public financing worth between 22 and 50 billion euros per year, EU officials said.

Depending on how large the rich countries’ overall handout is, the EU should expect to pay between 2 billion and 15 billion euros per year as its share of the total, the commission said.

Major polluters such as the US, China and India have so far been reluctant to estimate the cost of global warming, with each side keeping their cards close to their chest.

With Thursday’s move, the EU hopes to pile pressure on its partners ahead of key UN talks in December in Copenhagen.

The aim of the meeting in the Danish capital is to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emission levels, which expires in 2012.

“With less than 90 days before Copenhagen we need to make serious progress in these negotiations. That is why the commission is putting the first meaningful proposal on the table on how we might finance (the fight against) climate change,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

“The sums involved are potentially significant - both ambitious and fair - but will only get higher if we delay,” Barroso said.

While Europe should show leadership, Barroso said “everyone must make a contribution” to the global fight against climate change.

The EU was the first major economic bloc to commit itself to substantial greenhouse gas emission cuts - by at least a fifth below their 1990 levels by 2020 - but global players have yet to agree on how to share the burden of fighting climate change.

“Now we must break the impasse in the Copenhagen negotiations. That is why the commission is putting forward a balanced blueprint for financing the necessary action by developing countries to limit their emissions growth as well as their adaptation to climate change,” said Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.