Retailers urge EU to scrap anti-dumping duties on energy-saving lightbulbs

Leading European retailers today urged the EU to scrap punitive anti-dumping duties on energy-saving lightbulbs from China, claiming the tariffs cost consumers billions of euros a year.

The retailers, including Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco and Sören Hansen of Ikea, said the tariffs of up to 66% ensured that prices were "artificially inflated" when they reached the shops and this depressed demand for energy-saving bulbs.

The European retail round table claimed that if only one extra low-energy bulb was purchased per EU household this would save €2bn (£1.6bn) in electricity consumption - quite apart from reducing CO2 emissions.

The European commission has imposed duties on imports from China for the last six years and extended them for a year in late 2007. But many of the contentious imports are made by European firms in China.

Dutch group Philips, the world's biggest lighting company, is pressing for the duties to be lifted while Osram, owned by Germany's Siemens, has campaigned for them to be retained. But Osram recently gave up a legal challenge to the EC.

The duties are seen as in flagrant contradicition of EU ambitions to reduce energy consumption by 20% by 2020 - a cornerstone of its claim to be leading the global fight against climate change.
David Gow

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Rubbish idea that could make driving cheaper

A British company may have the answer to soaring petrol prices after it claimed yesterday to have become the first to have found a way to make fuel from rubbish.

neos, the chemicals company, said that it had patented a method of producing fuel from municipal solid waste, agricultural waste and organic commercial waste.

The company claims that it can produce about 400 litres (90 gallons) of ethanol from one tonne of dry waste. The new process works by heating the waste to produce gases, then feeding the gases to bacteria, which produce ethanol that can be purified into a fuel.

Ineos plans to sell the environmental product in industrial quantities by the end of 2010. Peter Williams, the chief executive of Ineos Bio, said: “This should mean that, unlike with other biofuels, we won’t have to make the choice between food and fuel.”

The development of fuel from waste could be a relief for motorists who have watched pump prices soar in the past year to an average of 133.3p per litre of diesel.

The bioethanol that Ineos produces will have to be combined with a fossil fuel, however, because very few cars in Britain can run solely on bioethanol. Ineos has a large traditional refinery business. It owns the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland, where a strike resulted in petrol shortages this year.
Catherine Boyle

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Ministers embrace electric car revolution

The scheme, which has already been taken up by Israel and Denmark, would sell heavily subsidised vehicles – or even give them away – in return for contracts to buy the electricity to charge them. Its inventor, a Silicon Valley software entrepreneur, believes it will at least halve the cost of motoring while dramatically reducing one of the main sources of the pollution that causes global warming.

The Prime Minister – who will reveal some of his thinking at the Motor Show this week – wants all new cars sold in Britain to be electric or hybrid vehicles by 2020, and is trying to enlist leaders of the motor industry because he wants "to see those cars manufactured in Britain".

motorists would be provided with cars just as mobile-phone customers now get their handsets. In return, they would take out a contract for a maximum number of miles.

The contract would entitle them to receive the electricity, either by plugging into any one of hundreds of thousands of recharge points across the country, or by exchanging flat batteries for fully charged ones. At present, the cars' range is likely to be only about 100 miles between recharges, which would take about two hours, so, on longer journeys, motorists would pop into filling stations for a three-minute battery exchange.
By Geoffrey Lean
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Prepay energy meters are 'unjust'

Millions of UK households are paying energy tariffs that are "unjust", the Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has said.

Mr Wicks said he would be prepared to legislate to force energy providers to lower their charges for the four million people on pre-payment meters.

Pre-payment tariffs can be up to 70% higher than the lowest rates available, said charity National Energy Action.

Mr Wicks said he had asked energy watchdog Ofgem to investigate the matter and report back.
Meter misery


The extra costs that people on pre-payment meters are now having to meet seem totally disproportionate
Malcolm Wicks, Energy Minister

Mr Wicks said: "The extra costs that people on pre-payment meters are now having to meet seem totally disproportionate.

"The gap between what they're paying and what other people are paying has grown to a very unjust extent.

"Depending on what the report says, we're well prepared to legislate to ensure this injustice doesn't occur in the future."

Soaring oil prices could push energy bills up by more than 60% within the next few years, according to a report for the energy supplier Centrica.

This has led to concerns that consumers are having pre-payment meters installed because they cannot afford their energy bills.

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