'Energy comes before climate'

The battle against climate change must not take precedence over the need to guarantee energy security, UK Industry Minister John Hutton was quoted as saying today, remarks that signal an apparent policy change.

The government has often said climate change is the biggest threat facing the world.

"Of course we've got to tackle climate change, it's a real and present danger for used (sic)," Hutton told the Daily Telegraph in an interview on the newspaper's website.

"But we've also go to be absolutely clear that our energy policy has got to be figured first and foremost with a view to supplying Britain with affordable and secure energy it needs for the future."

Hutton's remarks, in an interview on the energy crisis due to the spiralling costs of gas and electricity, come amid rising tensions with Russia over its bitter rift with Georgia which has raised fears for future security of gas supplies to Europe.

A spokeswoman for Hutton's Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform said there had been no change in policy and that energy security and climate change were considered of equal importance.

"There is no change of government policy. Energy security has always been a priority. John (Hutton) is the energy minister and it is his priority to make sure that the UK has enough energy in the future," she told Reuters.

But environmentalists expressed bewilderment at the apparent message from Hutton, an advocate for new nuclear and coal power stations to fill the energy void that will be left when many of the existing plants are forced to close over the next decade.

"The government repeatedly tells us climate change is the biggest threat we face and this seems to suggest that he (Hutton) doesn't even get the basics," said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Dave Timms.