BusinessGreen.com Review of 2008: April to June

April

April saw Tesco take one of the boldest steps yet to drive climate change into the mainstream, announcing it would put carbon labels on all its products as part of an effort to create the "currency of CO2".

Meanwhile, it was a mixed month for the wind energy industry. Siemens and Vestas announced more huge orders, as the Chinese government bent over backwards to tempt them to site new manufacturing capacity in the country and E.ON launched its plans for a huge wind farm in the Humber estuary.

And yet the business of actually finding somewhere to stick your shiny new turbines remained as tough as ever, as evidenced by the Scottish government's rejection of plans for a huge wind farm on the Isle of Lewis.

There was some good news though for the building sector as the government unveiled its shortlist of eco-towns and even better news for many BusinessGreen.com readers when a new study showed CSR execs' salaries were on the up.

Oh and there was bad news for all of us when Nicholas Stern said that his landmark report "badly underestimated" the cost of tackling climate change.

May

London's Mayor Boris took office in May and immediately applied his own special brand of internal logic to the capital's environmental challenges, promising to make the city the greenest in the world while announcing that he was to scrap plans for a new £25 congestion charge on the most polluting vehicles.

The government also caught the fever for scrapping innovative green proposals, officially canning some potentially intriguing research into personal carbon trading.

Elsewhere though, carbon trading took a step forward as the latest World Bank figures showed the carbon market doubled in size during 2007 to be worth $64bn and the UK government provided fresh details on its plan to extend cap-and-trade to 5,000 more firms through the carbon reduction commitment.

Meanwhile, Al Gore decided to put his money (or to be more precise other people's money) where his mouth is as his VC firm unveiled new climate change funds.

One huge polluter pulled in environmental plaudits as Drax announced plans to start using biomass at its huge coal-fired power plant, and another once again received stinging criticism as Shell announced it was to exit the London Array offshore wind project.

There were also some noticeable landmarks for the world of green motoring as Toyota announced it had sold its millionth Prius, and, at the other extreme, electric car firm Tesla opened its first store.

June

The relative calm before the economic storm of the summer saw the price of carbon in the EU's emissions trading scheme continue to hit record levels throughout June as the price of oil soared.

In the UK the government published its long anticipated renewables strategy outlining plans to invest £100bn in a decade long drive to completely revolutionise the way we generate energy, while the Crown Estate also gave the green light for a huge expansion in offshore wind capacity.

The Tories, meanwhile, attempted to outgreen the government, pledging to effectively ban all new coal-fired power plants that do not have carbon capture fitted as standard.

There was also further evidence the business leaders attitude to green regulation has changed beyond recognition as 100 of the world's largest firms called for "unambiguous" emission reduction targets as part of a successor to Kyoto.

And there was more evidence of just how surreal the Bush administration's climate change strategy had got, when the president confirmed he would kill dead attempts to introduce a US climate change bill, while also announcing an international deal to curb emissions was still possible on his watch – somewhat unsurprisingly it wasn't possible after all.