Most companies have no environment strategy: survey

BEIJING (Reuters) - Most companies in China, the United States, Canada and Britain have not laid out plans to improve their energy efficiency, despite growing concerns about global warming, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Nearly two-thirds of the 420 senior business executives surveyed in these four countries said no one in their organization had been tasked with overseeing the company's energy strategy, according to a report by Hill & Knowlton consultancy.

China led the pack with 82 percent saying there was no one responsible, followed by the U.S. at 70 percent.

But about half of British companies polled said there was someone in charge of environmental issues.

Over three-quarters of the respondents said there was a need to create a new role of "Chief Energy Officer" to oversee the firm's energy strategy. Demand for such a role was highest in China, where 87 percent of the companies saw the need, followed by Canada at 84 percent. The U.S. lagged at 66 percent.

"I think Chinese are more aware of the need to address climate change because they deal with it every day. Unlike the Americans or the Europeans where they discuss climate change under blue skies, Chinese are seeing the smog in their cities day after day," said Jack Perkowski, chief executive officer of ASIMCO Technologies said about the survey.

The survey also found 47 percent of the Chinese companies surveyed believed technology and change in human behavior must work together to tackle the issue of climate change, ahead of results by other countries.

Last month, China released its first national plans on climate change, saying it planned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 950 million tons of carbon dioxide by 2010.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that global carbon dioxide emissions must fall between 50 and 85 percent by 2050 to stop the planet from heating up more than 2 degrees Celsius, which could cause more deadly floods, droughts and heat waves.