BusinessGreen.com review of 2008: January to March

The year began almost exactly the same way it ended, with those in the environmental movement not entirely sure whether to celebrate or commiserate the progress delivered by the UN's seemingly interminable attempt to negotiate a successor to Kyoto.

If the Bali conference last December set out a timeline designed to ensure that an agreement is reached in late 2009, the Poznan conference earlier this month felt like Groundhog Day, again inviting observers to welcome the agreement of yet another schedule of talks and ignore the almost complete absence of tangible progress.

And yet there was still plenty of optimism for green businesses the world over throughout 2009.

Despite the global economy going into meltdown, investment in clean tech continued to prosper, while in the EU legislators managed to agree a package of climate change measures that, if far from perfect, at least give businesses the investment certainty they have been looking for.

Meanwhile, the US elected a new president who made it palpably clear that he "gets" the urgency of the climate change challenge and wants to use the creation of a low-carbon economy to create jobs and drive investment.

Here BusinessGreen.com picks out some of the other big stories and trends from the past 12 months.

January

Two of the global brands that have become most closely associated with the environmental movement started the year seeking to again highlight their desire to tap into the emerging market for green products. Toyota announced all its models would eventually have a hybrid option and General Electric (GE) announced it planned to double its investment in renewables.

As if to stress the fact that there was a strong commercial case for just such an investment, GE finished the month by announcing it had secured a $1bn order for new wind turbines.

Meanwhile, the EU released the first version of its climate change action plan, detailing how it planned to meet its target of reducing emissions 20 per cent by 2020. Businesses began to digest the implications of a plan that would drive up the price of carbon, implement new energy efficiency standards and force the EU to generate up to a fifth of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

There were also early signs of the central role climate change was to play in the US general election, and further scientific evidence that first-generation biofuels might not be delivering the emission reductions that were first thought.

February

February began with good news from the world of investment banking (and that wasn't a sentence you got to write often during 2008), when three of Wall Street's biggest banks signed up to new green investment criteria that would make it harder for them to justify funding for carbon-intensive industries.

And if banks were increasingly reluctant to invest in the most polluting industries, they were also looking for alternatives, with new research predicting investment in clean energy would top $7 trillion by 2030.

Meanwhile, in the UK Gordon Brown followed Marks & Spencer's high-profile decision to introduce charges for single-use plastic bags by threatening to impose a bag tax on supermarkets if they did not increase efforts to curb bag use.

Yet at the same time, his government quietly confirmed that it was planning a massive scaling back of green advice and support services for UK businesses as it attempted to plug a £1bn hole in Defra's budget.

Oh, and the National Trust sought to start a new once-every-four-years tradition by inviting businesses to use the leap day to give staff time off to undertake green tasks.

March

If it's March, it must be the budget. Back in the days before budgets were about trying to save capitalism itself, Alistair Darling unveiled what he claimed was the greenest budget ever, promising higher taxes for gas guzzlers and reiterating the prime minister's threat to slap a levy on plastic bags.

Gordon Brown also got involved in the green tax debate, writing to his European counterparts to urge them to cut VAT on green products such as energy-saving light bulbs.

At the same time, there was further evidence that the government was struggling to back up its climate change rhetoric with real action, after an analysis of its much-touted carbon-reduction commitment cap-and-trade scheme revealed firms that fail to cut emissions will face negligible financial penalties.

There was good news, though, from the renewables sector with a report claiming renewable capacity had doubled in four years to account for four per cent of the world's energy mix – a long way short of the 100 per cent some scientists now believe is needed, but not bad from a near standing start.

And the offsetting industry got a major vote of confidence when JP Morgan shelled out to acquire UK offsetter Climate Care.

There were also the first indications of the tribulations that were to dog the second half of the year when the collapse of Bear Stearns prompted speculation clean tech investment could suffer.