British retailers are to phase out traditional incandescent light bulbs and offer customers only low-energy fluorescent bulbs by 2011.

The plan, which will cut UK carbon dioxide emissions by five million tonnes a year, was announced by Hilary Benn, the Environment, on the last day of the Labour Party conference this morning.

Mr Benn said that the move was the result of a voluntary initiative by major retailers and energy suppliers "with the strong support of the lighting industry and the government" to phase out old-fashioned light bulbs.

"We need to turn them off, for good" he said. "So our aim is for traditional 150W light bulbs to be phased out by January next year, 100W bulbs the year after, 40W the year after that and all high-energy light bulbs by 2011.

"This will save five million tonnes of CO2 a year and take us closer to our 2050 target."

Retailers said that the initiative was an attempt to pre-empt EU-wide rules expected to be introduced some time after 2011.

In a statement, the Co-Op said that it would stop selling incandescent - or tungsten filament - bulbs will start next month at 50 of its supermarkets. They will be phased out across the group's 2,300 food stores by 2010.

Around 80 per cent of bulbs sold in UK stores are high-energy bulbs, even though fluorescent bulbs use 75 per cent less energy and last up to 12 times longer. Retailers said that they can reduce electricity bills by £9 per yer per bulb, or £100 over the bulb's lifetime.

The Government has already set a target to reduce carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, announced earlier this week that he had called for a review on whether that target was sufficiently ambitious.

Mr Benn said today: "Britain can either lead the world in a low carbon transformation of our economy, in protecting our countryside and wildlife, and in renewing our cities, with new jobs in new environmental industries, or we can be left behind.

"As individuals, we can either learn to live more sustainably today or, in a few years' time, face having to tell our grandchildren why, as a generation, we did not act while we still had some time."

But Mr Benn's announcement was dismissed as a publicity stunt by his opposite number on the Conservative front bench, Peter Ainsworth, who asked: "How many ministers does it take to change a light bulb?"

He added: "In a ten-minute speech about the environment the only thing Hilary Benn has announced is a policy we’ve heard before re from other ministers. If this is the sum of Labour’s commitment to the environment it is clear why they have consistently failed to meet our emission targets."

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