Tesco to trial electric car charging points

Tesco is poised to announce the latest phase of its sustainability push with a commitment to trial electric car-charging points at its store and build what it claims will be the world's first "zero-carbon" supermarket.

A spokesman for the company confirmed the new plans will be unveiled in a speech by Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy at the London School of Economics on Friday.

In an interview with yesterday's Sunday Times, Leahy revealed the supermarket giant was investigating trialling electric car-charging points at stores in Kensington and Vauxhall in London.

If successful, the company would look to roll out charging points more widely, and Leahy added that Tesco was already in talks with several councils and electric car firms.

The company is also preparing to unveil plans for its first "zero-carbon" store in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire. The wood-framed store will be powered using a biomass-fuelled combined heat and power plant, which is expected to generate sufficient energy for the store to sell some power back to the grid.

Leahy is also expected to deliver an impassioned defence of consumer-focused firms' ability to deliver greener business models without the need for higher green taxes.

In the same Sunday Times interview, Leahy warned that much of the debate surrounding green taxation risked alienating consumers from engaging with environmental initiatives.

"People are so taxed already that every time green is mentioned it is with a new tax that just switches people off the whole subject," he said. "How can you contemplate the future if the promise is tax and regulation? Who is going to buy into that?"

He also warned that calls from some environmentalists for a slowdown in economic growth as the most effective means of curbing carbon emissions would limit the chances of emerging nations signing up to an international climate-change deal.

"I think too much of this debate is about how much growth should we give up to be green," he said. "This is the wrong approach because the risk you run in the West as a result is low growth or no growth. The bigger risk is [that going green] will be ignored by China or India because they are simply not going to adopt any policies that are no-growth."