President George W Bush's plan to stop the growth of global warming emissions is bound to be part of his chequered environmental legacy, a record roundly criticized by conservation groups and political opponents. The broad outlines of the plan call for letting US carbon dioxide emissions peak in 2025, but offer no specifics on how to get there. Bush rejected new taxes, more trade barriers or abandoning nuclear power while focusing on emissions from the power industry.

President George W Bush on Wednesday called for halting the growth of US greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, but drew quick criticism for offering few ideas on how to do so before his term ends next year. While trying to shape global climate change talks in Paris this week and the debate in the US Congress later this year, Bush's cautious approach on global warming falls far short of European goals and lawmakers' proposals.

Europe's fourth-largest utility, RWE of Germany, said on Wednesday it will enter renewable energy projects with municipal utilities to lower its output of carbon dioxide. RWE said it had signed a letter of intent with the ARGE group of 50 local utilities for power projects using sources such as wind and biomass in Germany and abroad. Chief Executive Juergen Grossmann wants to cut carbon dioxide emissions as allowances to emit the greenhouse gas, given out under a European Union-wide scheme, are made scarcer and costlier to moderate global warming.

Greenhouse gas curbs on industries such as steel and cement could help a UN-led drive to fight global warming despite fears they would be hard to implement, delegates at a US-led conference said on Wednesday. Developing nations objected at the 17-nation talks that such sectoral industrial schemes might throttle their inefficient energy-intensive businesses and said the burden for curbs should fall instead on rich nations.

The Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming, its author said on Wednesday, and should have presented a gloomier view of the future. "We underestimated the risks ... we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases ... and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases,' Lord Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

Daiwa Securities Co. is set to begin selling environment-linked investment trusts from Thursday that are partly administered by an investment management firm established by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, company officials said. The Russell Global Environmental Technology Fund will invest in companies renowned for environmentally friendly technology, with the initial fund aimed at totaling

Japanese and European Union leaders pledged to jointly call in their April 23 talks in Tokyo for a new energy-saving framework to curb global warming at the Group of Eight energy ministers meeting in June in Japan, according to a draft of their postsummit statement.

Air quality regulators in the San Francisco Bay Area appear set to begin charging hundreds of businesses in the region for their emissions of heat-trapping gases. It is believed to be the first time in the country that any government body would charge industries directly for emissions that contribute to climate change. The regional agency that is considering the fee, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, would be effectively leapfrogging the continuing debate in Sacramento and Washington over how to control emissions.