Top executives from Sun Microsystems and Vodafone are
among 14 business leaders who have written to prime minister Tony
Blair backing moves to tackle climate change.
In an open letter to the prime minister, the Corporate Leaders
Group on climate change (CLG) said the government should act boldly
to stimulate investment in low carbon technology and use
negotiations on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme as an opportunity
to take on challenging targets.
The letter is signed by Sun Microsystems UK & Ireland
managing director Trudy Norris-Grey and Sir Julian Horn-Smith,
deputy chief executive of Vodafone Group, along with senior
executives from Shell, Tesco, John Lewis Partnership, Unilever and
other major corporations.
It sets out areas for potential collaboration between business
and the government to increase action on climate change, including
support for early stage low-carbon technologies, improving energy
efficiency in the commercial sector and strengthening
regulation.
The CLG, set up under the auspices of the Prince of Wales’
business and the environment programme, believes that a
strengthened EU Emissions Trading Scheme should be key to the UK’s
climate change strategy.
Richard Barrington, global lead on environmental policy at Sun
Microsystems UK, said, “The government has to accelerate the move
by business towards more sustainable consumption and production
methods, and the only way this can be achieved is by putting in
place much tougher policies and creating incentives to change
behaviour.”
Increasing concern about the environment among IT professionals
also sparked the launch of the Green Grid project, aimed at
reducing the power consumption and heat generated by datacentres,
earlier this year. The move was backed by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun
Microsystems and AMD.