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Office workers should be allowed to shed their suits and ties and adopt lightweight informal clothing to help cut carbon dioxide emissions, according to Lord Adair Turner, the new climate czar.

He believes forcing men to wear suits and women to wear smart skirts raises demand for air-conditioning and discourages them from using sustainable forms of transport such as walking and cycling.

“We have to stop over-air-conditioning offices. In summer we should only air-condition offices to the kind of temperature where it is comfortable if you are wearing light sleeveless summer clothes,” he said.

Turner chairs the new Climate Change Committee, which launches tomorrow and whose job is to set national targets for CO2 reductions, and to monitor the government’s performance in achieving them.

He is also a leading businessmen, holding directorships at Standard Chartered, the banking giant, United Business Media, the media company, and Siemens, the engineering group. His previous jobs include being director general of the Confederation of British Industry.

Under his new brief, however, he is exercised by ties, believing a closed collar unduly raises people’s temperature. “I do think in the summer we should stop wearing ties. I like them in winter because they keep you warm but if you see me in summer from now on I will be tieless,” he said.

Civil servants are likely to be among the first office workers to be liberated from their formal clothing, with Turner hinting that he may even encourage the wearing of Turner: no ties on me

shorts. “There is a case for the civil service setting an example on this. I don’t think I would go as far as shorts myself yet but it is an interesting challenge and we are going to be thinking about it.”

Turner’s proposal for office workers is one element of a strategy aimed at making big cuts in the 670m tons of CO2 generated by Britain each year. About a third come from power generation, a third from surface transport and the rest from heating.

He wants to see emissions cut by at least 60% and possibly as much as 90% by 2050, a vision which will be welcomed by green campaigners. He has even suggested putting wind turbines on the central reservations of motorways.

Turner’s views on aviation, among the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gases could prove controversial.

He said: “Aviation is tricky. It is the one major human activity where there is no substitute for fossil fuels. One vision is that by 2050 the only thing we use carbon-based fuels for is aviation,” said Turner. “It could even be that it will expand.”

Under such a vision, renewable and nuclear energy would provide all Britain’s needs for electricity but would also be used to generate fuels such as hydrogen that could be used for cars.

Turner’s first major holiday after taking up the committee chairmanship will see him, his wife and two teenage daughters fly to the Alps to ski at Courchevel. He said: “We have to fly out for organisa-tional reasons but we are going to come back by train.”

Turner acknowledges he has a long way to go in greening his own life, calculating his family’s carbon emissions at about 30 tons in 2006. An average British household of four people would generate 16-17 tonnes.

He said: “Our family emissions are significantly above the average, although they are below average for someone of my income. We have installed solar panels to heat the swimming pool at our country home so I think the emissions have gone to under 25 tons.”

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