Business chiefs urge action on climate change

· E.ON and BAA bosses sign letter to Number 10 · Environment activists say signatures 'hypocritical'
Terry Macalister
The Guardian,
Friday September 19 2008

Business leaders including directors at Tesco, Lloyds TSB and other top high street names have urged Gordon Brown to drop his slowly, slowly approach to tackling global warming and go for "transformational change", saying the prime minister should not be held back by fears over the current financial crisis.
But the involvement in the initiative of BAA, owner of Heathrow, and the energy firm E.ON angered environmentalists, who said the companies that encouraged flying and built coal-fired power stations showed "hypocrisy of the purest strain".
A letter signed by some of the biggest figures in British business, to be sent today to Brown and to David Cameron and Nick Clegg, said the party leaders should work together urgently on measures such as higher energy efficiency standards, support for low-carbon technology and the auctioning of carbon allowances.
The companies, all members of The Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, said they saw their own business opportunities in being at the head of a green revolution, but wanted regulatory certainty to help them plan their investments better.
The letter said: "Climate change poses global social, environmental and economic risks and demands a transformational change in how we manage our economy. Incremental change will not do.
"We have addressed this letter to the leaders of all political parties with representation in the houses of parliament with a view to encouraging a cross-political consensus on the scale and speed of change required, and a constructive
political debate on how this can be achieved." The note was signed by Lucy Neville-Rolfe, director of corporate and legal affairs at Tesco, and Ian Cheshire, boss at B&Q owner Kingfisher, but also Paul Golby, the chief executive of E.ON UK and Colin Matthews at BAA.
Greenpeace said the signatures of the German-owned energy group and Spanish-owned airports operator were inappropriate. "This is hypocrisy of the purest strain. It's astounding that E.ON would call for action on climate change when they're agitating to build Britain's first coal-fired power stations in decades. It makes an environmentalist's jaw drop to see the BAA logo on this letter when they're trying to expand airports across the nation," said Ben Stewart, the Greenpeace communications director.
"This is like Howard Marks calling for a crackdown on pot. If the executives of these companies want action on climate change they should immediately lock themselves in their boardrooms and not come out until Kingsnorth and Heathrow expansion have been dropped."
The business group, coordinated by a Cambridge university programme for industry, said Brown should assume a legally binding deal on a 30% cut in greenhouse gas emissions will be signed at the 2009 United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen.
It tells political leaders problems in the financial markets and an economic slowdown cannot stand in the way of action on climate change.
"The global economic slowdown may cause some to question whether the UK can afford to act so boldly, but we believe action cannot be delayed, and furthermore that decisive action will stimulate economic activity and job creation in certain sectors," it said.
Cheshire denied the letter implied the signatories did not believe the government was serious enough about climate change.
"No, its the reverse," he said. "The government needs some space to implement change and we are showing our support for new measures."
Backstory
Business leaders calling for regulation could be viewed as turkeys voting for Christmas, but the primary aim of this initiative is to save themselves. Some of this is to do with reputation: it is good to be seen leading a green revolution when your customers accept climate change is of huge importance. But chief executives also hate uncertainty and find it difficult to make long-term investment decisions when they do not have a good idea of what the regulatory framework will look like. Business leaders are keen to win public money for experimental schemes such as carbon capture and storage, which has been linked with E.ON's proposed Kingsnorth coal-fired power station. They would also like public bodies to "go green", providing opportunities for business.