Intellect‘‘s Consumer Electronics Council has joined the British Retail Consortium, retailers and the Government to work on the details of an initiative to phase out energy-intensive consumer electronics products that cost consumers and the environment dearly, Minister for Climate Change Joan Ruddock said.

The manufacturers‘‘ organisation, Intellect, has joined the initiative announced in the autumn to develop proposals to promote energy efficient consumer electronics products.

Meeting with key names from the UK‘‘s consumer electronics manufacturers, Joan Ruddock emphasised the importance of working with the industry to take forward government plans to improve performance standards and promote energy efficient choices to consumers in a drive to slash CO2 emissions by up to 1MtCO2 a year - the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road.

This initiative will aim to set clear targets in the next few months and participants will be look ing at ways to analyse the energy efficiency of consumer electronic products, starting with set-top boxes and to consider how a significant reduction could be made in stand-by energy use.

The British Retail Consortium is leading the work, in partnership with the Government, the Energy Saving Trust, retailers and manufacturers to develop proposals for an initiative to promote more energy efficient consumer electronics products with the aim of cementing commitments in early 2008.

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The Government is keen to aim for a firm agenda to phase out the least efficient consumer electronics products from UK markets, including those which use excessive power in standby, with the aim of significantly reducing carbon emissions from these products over the next four years. If retailers were to adopt the Government‘‘s published range of indicative performance standards for consumer electro nics a reduction in emissions of up to 1MtCO2 a year would be achieved.

Joan Ruddock met with Intellect, the trade association for the UK technology industry and manufacturers: Alba, Humax, JVC, Sony and Pace. The British Retail Consortium and leading retailers attended a meeting in November: Amazon, ASDA, Comet Group, The Co-Operative group, DSG International (Dixons.co.uk/Currys/PC World/Pixmania), Home Retail Group (Argos/Homebase), John Lewis, Marks &Spencer, Sainsbury‘‘s, Tesco and Woolworths. All the major consumer electronics retailers have been approached and others have indicated that they would consider joining such an initiative. This is an open process reaching out to all retailers, small or big.

The initiative to phase out inefficient consumer electronic products follows the success of the voluntary initiative to phase out inefficient lightbulbs, announced by Hilary Benn on 27th September 2007 and being led by major retailers and energy suppliers. Both projects reflect energy saving measures for general product policy laid out in the Energy White Paper.

In the Budget 2006, Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, announced ‘‘a new initiative, in partnership with major retailers and the Energy Saving Trust, to introduce voluntary schemes in the retail sector, which encourage the purchase of more energy efficient alternatives in consumer electronics.‘‘ Discussions held yesterday are part of this process