Conservatives tap global companies for green advice

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - The Conservatives said on Tuesday they will seek advice from some of the world's biggest companies on how to cut emissions from government departments by a tenth in a year if they win an election due by next June.

The Conservatives, leading Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour in the polls, said it will work with Tesco, the world's third biggest retailer, telecoms company BT and B&Q, owned by Kingfisher, Europe's biggest home improvement retailer.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said government buildings should be much more energy efficient and public departments should use more electric vehicles.

The finance ministry will put pressure on ministers and senior state employees to find other ways to cut energy consumption in their departments. Those that fail will lose part of their funding, Osborne added.

Their success, or lack of it, will be published in real time on the Internet, he said. Senior party members representing each policy area will unveil their plans to target climate change in speeches this week.

"We are deadly serious about achieving this 10 percent reduction," Osborne told students at Imperial College London, a science-based university founded in 1907. "We have set ourselves a very challenging target of doing it within 12 months, knowing full well that people can hold us to account."

With countries meeting for U.N. climate talks in Denmark next month, both the Labour Party and Conservatives have been keen to promote their environmental credentials.

Osborne said Britain's finance ministry had traditionally been "at best indifferent, at worst obstructive" towards environmental policy.