By Gerard Wynn

LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) - Mounting criticism over how some climate policies are adding to record energy and food prices threatens to distract UN-led talks on a new global warming pact, which resume this week in Bonn.

The UN's climate change agency hosts more than 160 countries at the talks starting on Monday to help secure global agreement by the end of next year on a new pact to counter global warming.

The Bonn talks, which end on June 13, will focus on the "toolkit" of policies which can curb rising emissions of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say risk catastrophic climate change.

But some existing climate policies -- including those which promote biofuels, renewable power and emissions trading -- already add to food and energy prices, at a time of public fears over inflation coupled with a global economic slowdown.

Another UN agency, the Food and Agricultural Organisation, hosts a summit this week in Rome on improving food security.

The FAO forecast last week that wheat prices could be up to 60 percent higher over the next decade compared to the last 10 years, and blamed as a "strong factor" biofuels produced from food crops such as corn, intended to replace gasoline and so cut carbon emissions and improve energy security.

"While growing crops for biofuels has some influence on food prices, clearly other factors like increasing wheat consumption and hoarding of rice also play a significant role," the UN's climate chief Yvo de Boer told Reuters on Sunday.

Not tackling climate change itself is no solution to the food price problem, given exceptional droughts in Australia and south-east Europe are partly to blame for recent price spikes.

Climate policies are also adding to energy costs at a time of record oil prices.

European truckers and seamen from Portugal to Bulgaria blocked roads and ports on Friday, demanding government action to curb rising fuel prices, while the British government is under pressure over its planned tax hike on gas guzzling cars.

The European Union estimates that plans to toughen its emissions trading scheme will add 10 to 15 percent to power prices across the 27 member state bloc.

Similarly, utilities pass on to electricity consumers the extra cost of climate policies which force them to supply clean, renewable energy for example from solar power, which is far more expensive than conventional fossil fuels.

DEAL

The Bonn meeting is the second of eight meant to clinch by the end of next year a broader and tougher climate treaty to come into force after the first round of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012.

"The challenge is now to move ahead and start identifying what could be written into the 2009 agreement," de Boer said on Sunday of the Bonn talks.

Kyoto binds the greenhouse gases of some 37 industrialised countries, but neither of the world's top two emitters -- the United States and China.

The main sticking point is how to split the cost of re-deploying the world's entire energy system away from fossil fuels, and especially how soon emerging economies should accept caps on their greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, an intervening U.S. election in November threatens to sap momentum from the talks, supposed to seal a deal by end-2009, but with some appointees under a new U.S. administration not expected in place until June next year.

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