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DIFFERENT ways to reduce the environmental impact of office buildings are to come under the spotlight, just weeks after Colchester's businesses were challenged to help cut the town's carbon footprint by 30 per cent.

The Government's All Party Urban Development Group is looking into what is preventing buildings from reducing their carbon emissions, and how this can be addressed.

Helping building owners and occupiers overcome environmental barriers and monitoring and enforcement are among the areas to be addressed.

The group is currently calling on some organisations, including local authorities and private sector organisations, to given written evidence to the inquiry by May 5.

Colchester 2020, a group established to promote Colchester as a business destination, recently challenged residents and businesses in the town to help reduce the borough's carbon footprint by 30 per cent by the year 2020.

The group admitted that businesses were "greater culprits" than individuals on generating carbon emissions and welcomed the All Party group inquiry.

"We understand that businesses have to play a much greater part in understanding what their responsibilities are to the environment," said Colchester 2020 lead member for business, Ewan Dodds. "There are organisations like the Carbon Trust that put out information so we can understand our impact and how we can adapt our practices and habits."

He said while large companies can afford to pay someone to consider ways in which businesses can change, small businesses can not.

He added: "Having a policy group out there doing this inquiry is a good thing. It is needed."

The Government has already said it wants all new buildings to be carbon neutral by 2019.

The All Party Urban Development Group said cities account for 75 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and buildings alone generate nearly half of all CO2 emissions.

About 20 per cent of this is from 24 million homes in the UK and 20 per cent is from other buildings. But the United Nations Panel on Climate Change said the building sector has the largest potential to impact on energy efficiency.

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