Government offices to use 'global warming' chemical

New Government offices are to be fitted with air conditioning containing chemicals that are blamed for accelerating global warming.

The plans for the £311m headquarters being built for the Home Office in Marsham Street, Westminster, stipulate that its air cooling system should use a refrigerant that has previously been condemned by ministers.

On the eve of next week's Earth Summit in Johannesburg on the planet's future, environmentalists accused the Government of hypocrisy by failing to lead by example in the design of the building.

Details of the specifications for the multi-million pound air conditioning system sent to contractors, and obtained by The Independent, show it will have to contain hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

However, in guidance to companies last year, the Government warned that HFCs were "many times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, and so should be avoided".

It added: "It is recognised that HFCs are not sustainable in the long term and that technological developments may eventually make it possible to replace them in applications where they are used."

Businesses are urged to "design buildings without air conditioning whenever feasible, by using natural ventilation or, less preferably, mechanical ventilation". The particular refrigerant specified by the Home Office for the headquarters contract, R407C, has been described by the former Department of the Environment, Transport, Local Government and the Regions as having a "global warming potential" 1,500 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Stephen Tindale, the executive director of Greenpeace, said: "Yet again, Blair has been caught looking like a hypocrite. We've heard a lot of rhetoric over the years but there has been precious little action.

"Now it's time for him to walk the walk, otherwise he will have no credibility when he lectures the rest of the world in South Africa in a fortnight. Why should other leaders take him seriously when he can't even deliver a simple policy in his own backyard?"

A Home Office spokesman said the Government was conscious of trying to find the most "efficient environmental solutions" to the building's air-conditioning system.

The spokesman said: "There are guidelines set down which say we should avoid the use of HFCs where there isn't a viable alternative. What we are doing is not in conflict with that, because in the case of Marsham Street there's no viable alternative.

"A great deal has been done to find the most efficient way," he added.

"The way the building has been designed, it would either be prohibitively expensive or have other types of disadvantage to use an alternative."

The new Home Office headquarters, being built under a public-private partnership scheme, are scheduled to open in spring 2005.

The plans for the new building – more than £100m in excess of the original envisaged cost – will make the building one of London's most expensive office blocks.

Last month, the Cabinet Office apologised for the "regrettable mistakes" that led to Whitehall offices being refurbished with sapele wood from endangered rainforests in Cameroon, central Africa. The disclosure that timber from unsustainable sources was used 22 times in Government offices led to demonstrations by Greenpeace outside the offices.