New Climate Group to link business and Government

Prime Minister Tony Blair has launched a new organisation which will forge links between business leaders, financial institutions and governments, in a bid to increase progress on tackling climate change issues.

The Climate Group will be run as a charity, and will work to ‘promote the acceleration of greenhouse gas emission reductions globally’.

The group, which describes itself as non-partisan and independent, says that its work will parallel that of the Kyoto Protocol.

A number of key businesses, including oil firms, have joined the new coalition.

Meanwhile, the Government's Sustainable Energy Policy Network (SEPN) has published its first annual report on the implementation of the Energy White Paper.

Critics have highlighted the fact that the report scales back domestic carbon reduction targets for 2010, from 5m tonnes to 4.2m tonnes.

However, environment secretary Margaret Beckett said that the Government is ‘still broadly on course’ to meet the emissions targets.

For further information, visit the SEPN website.